Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 2: we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of interesting polls breaking this out
Speaker 1: this morning, both on the Democratic side, some problems with
Speaker 1: Biden and non voters, and also on the Republican side,
Speaker 1: some interesting insights into who is actually the most electable
Speaker 1: sort of surprising. We also have new comments from Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell about what exactly is going on with him and
Speaker 1: his health. And we also have new comments from Diane
Speaker 1: Feinstein where she appeared to forget that she had given
Speaker 1: her daughter power of attorney over her personal affairs. Also
Speaker 1: some details about how a doom loop that is coming
Speaker 1: for commercial real estate could really imperil a lot of
Speaker 1: the commercial banking sector, so we'll dig into that. We've
Speaker 1: also got some new details about how gen Z feels
Speaker 1: about college is much different from how millennials felt about college,
Speaker 1: and a very interesting speech from Mike Pence condemning populism
Speaker 1: and asserting his view of what the Republican Party should
Speaker 1: be spoiler alert sounds a lot like the past of
Speaker 1: what the Republican Party has.
Speaker 3: Been, so there's a lot to say about it there.
Speaker 1: It's actually very interesting, so we'll dig into that. We're
Speaker 1: also excited to have a YouTuber Fantano and music critic
Speaker 1: on to do a little fun segment dissecting the political
Speaker 1: playlist the music playlist of some of the presidential contenders.
Speaker 1: So that should be a fun one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really exciting. Yeah, I go ahead.
Speaker 1: Before we get into any of that, though, we want
Speaker 1: to thank all of the Premium subscribers who've been helping
Speaker 1: us out because we are super super excited to be
Speaker 1: putting together our very first ever focus group, and I
Speaker 1: can now reveal to you a few of the details
Speaker 1: of this focus group. So it's happening this weekend. We
Speaker 1: should have some results to bring to you next week.
Speaker 1: It's among Republican voters in the state of New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: so we should get a good view from them about
Speaker 1: what candidates they're considering, what candidates they're with. Some of
Speaker 1: them are sort of settled on their candidates, some of
Speaker 1: them are undecided, So we'll dig into all of that
Speaker 1: and some of the top issues. It should be really cool.
Speaker 2: What I'm most excited for from our focus group and
Speaker 2: the work that we've put into it, and on top
Speaker 2: of our team and the firm that we've partnered with,
Speaker 2: is we're trying to get to stuff that the mainstream
Speaker 2: media doesn't ask.
Speaker 3: We're going to ask economic questions. We're going to try
Speaker 3: and get into the.
Speaker 2: Deeper like what motivates voters, and actually get to some
Speaker 2: uniting factors and more so just move towards the structural
Speaker 2: things that affect every every day people's lives as opposed
Speaker 2: to just pure horse race. So we're going to do
Speaker 2: our best year. We really excited to put that work in.
Speaker 2: As we've said before though, it costs a lot of money.
Speaker 2: So if you are able to Upbreakingpoints dot Com to
Speaker 2: become a premium member, we think you're going to get
Speaker 2: a lot out of it. Both you know both to
Speaker 2: listen to. But really I think it's gonna be a
Speaker 2: very visual medium. Think people are going to want to
Speaker 2: watch some of the stuff that we put together.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it should be really cool, and we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you about what you think of it. When
Speaker 1: we get it all together and present the results. Let
Speaker 1: us know what you think and if you enjoy it
Speaker 1: and you get something out of it, also let us
Speaker 1: know what we should do next, because perhaps this is
Speaker 1: the thing that we you know, it's not just a want,
Speaker 1: sure we could continue to do moving forward. All right, So,
Speaker 1: speaking of polls and focus groups and politics and all
Speaker 1: of the rest, some pretty dire numbers for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: and the Democratic Party among non white voters. And this
Speaker 1: is a very interesting analysis put together by the New
Speaker 1: York Times Nate Cohen. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We've got some of the graphics here. So what these
Speaker 1: charts show is consistent signs of erosion in black and
Speaker 1: Hispanic support for Biden, and really not just for Biden.
Speaker 1: I mean they start to track this shift back in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. It really begins to accelerate with some of
Speaker 1: the realignment that occurs with Donald Trump, in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: These lines track the sentiment of black and brown and
Speaker 1: other non white voters towards Democrats and support for the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party across these years by different demographic growths. So
Speaker 1: the first one that you see there is just by
Speaker 1: race and ethnicity. You can see black support declining. You
Speaker 1: can see all non white support declining. You can see
Speaker 1: Hispanic support declining. They don't have Asian broken out here
Speaker 1: because they just didn't have a large enough sample size.
Speaker 1: Then they go on to gender. It's among both genders,
Speaker 1: male and female. They go to age. It's among both
Speaker 1: ages both age groups that they break out here. Then
Speaker 1: they go to education. You see this trend among non
Speaker 1: college and college degree holding. However, the trend is much
Speaker 1: steeper among non college degree holding non white voters and
Speaker 1: among income groups. You also see the decline happening among
Speaker 1: basic all income groups, but it is particularly notable among
Speaker 1: those making less than fifty K, and actually among those
Speaker 1: who are making more than one hundred K, so that's
Speaker 1: the highest income group. You actually see the trend reversing somewhat.
Speaker 1: So this is consistent with that sorting of voters among
Speaker 1: education and class lines that we have sort of consistently
Speaker 1: tracked over the years. So they make the point that
Speaker 1: mister Biden is underperforming most among non white voters making
Speaker 1: less than one hundred thousand dollars per year, at least
Speaker 1: temporarily erasing the century old tendency for Democrats to fare
Speaker 1: better among lower income than higher income non white voters. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not like non white voter Sager are flocking in
Speaker 1: droves to the Republican Party, although they do note that
Speaker 1: there is a modest group of five percent of non
Speaker 1: white Biden voters who now say they support mister Trump,
Speaker 1: so there has been some small shift actually affirmatively towards Trump. However,
Speaker 1: the bigger thing that Democrats are concerned about, and the
Speaker 1: bigger worry for them out of numbers like this, is
Speaker 1: that these voters just aren't going to show up. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what we saw in the midterms. It's
Speaker 1: not like non white voters went to the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: It's just they were not nearly as animated about this
Speaker 1: election as white voters were, who have basically maintained their
Speaker 1: support for the Democratic Party across the Trump and Biden years.
Speaker 1: It's just that they didn't show up their turnout was
Speaker 1: way down. And when you're talking about these razor thin margins,
Speaker 1: and when you're looking at polls that are coming out
Speaker 1: that show Biden and Trump tied in a general election
Speaker 1: had to head matchup, this is an important part of
Speaker 1: the story of why Biden is struggling to break out
Speaker 1: ahead of Trump at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the line that just stuck out to me is
Speaker 2: this quote, I mean, which is just unbelievable. Guys, can
Speaker 2: if we can put it up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: It's so important for people to understand. I mean, when
Speaker 2: he is underperforming amongst non white voters making less than
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars per year, that quote at temporarily
Speaker 2: erases the century old tendency for Democrats to fare better
Speaker 2: amongst lower income than higher income non white voters. This
Speaker 2: is a full blown political realignment that we're watching. And
Speaker 2: if it does manifest whenever it comes to the polling
Speaker 2: I mean to the actual polling stations and where people
Speaker 2: are pulling the lever for votes, that is just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It also does make sense though, in terms of the
Speaker 2: issue set that it's most animating for the new Democratic base,
Speaker 2: which is abortion and listen we've talked about it before. Actually,
Speaker 2: freddied Woar made a good pint, which is abortion really
Speaker 2: is one of those things that cost cuts across class lines,
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why it is particularly animating.
Speaker 3: But let's be real.
Speaker 2: You know, it's white liberal women in particular who are
Speaker 2: the most animated about it. Nothing wrong, just saying though
Speaker 2: that those are people who are voting the most whenever
Speaker 2: it comes to that issue. Well, if that's the only
Speaker 2: issue set that you're really running on, then people who
Speaker 2: are most voted but motivated by economic factors, they're either
Speaker 2: going to stay home, or they're going to look elsewhere,
Speaker 2: or they're just going to be particularly pissed off and
Speaker 2: they may, you know, it may take something at the
Speaker 2: very last minute to can convince them to vote, which
Speaker 2: is pretty devastating whenever that's your pitch as a party.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not just abortion that Biden's running on.
Speaker 2: He continues to embrace the emblem Bidenomics for some reason
Speaker 2: that none of us understand. It's very clear from these
Speaker 2: numbers working class, non white voters do not subscribe to
Speaker 2: Bidenomics or the Bidenomics message at all.
Speaker 1: So this is actually the entire subject of my monologue today,
Speaker 1: which is that the experience of the average voter of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration has been one of seeing every pandemic
Speaker 1: era aid program that genuinely helped a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't get me wrong, a lot of suffering
Speaker 1: during COVID two, But if you look at the numbers,
Speaker 1: people were able to pay down their debt, people were
Speaker 1: able to have a little bit of a cushion in
Speaker 1: their bank account. You think about the child tax credit,
Speaker 1: you think about the direct checks, you think about support
Speaker 1: for affordable childcare, all of these things, expanded healthcare, all
Speaker 1: of these things got stripped away over the course of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. And you add to that increasing prices
Speaker 1: making it much more difficult for people to be able
Speaker 1: to afford the things they need, just the basics of survival,
Speaker 1: and wildly unaffordable housing, perhaps the least affordable housing market
Speaker 1: that you know we've seen, certainly in our lifetimes, perhaps ever,
Speaker 1: and it spells a lot of trouble now long term.
Speaker 1: I actually think some of the things that Biden has
Speaker 1: done have been good and will benefit the economy in
Speaker 1: the long term. The industrial policy, you think about the
Speaker 1: CHIPSAC Inflation Reduction Act. You think about the moves on unions,
Speaker 1: the moves on antitrust, but those things are not hitting
Speaker 1: people's bank accounts today. And so in terms of what
Speaker 1: matters when people are casting their votes, the fact that
Speaker 1: their material interests haven't been put first and foremost for
Speaker 1: especially you know, lower income or working class voters, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to matter. Matt carp is a historian, scholar, author, etc.
Speaker 1: Who studies this stuff really closely. He calls it less
Speaker 1: class realignment and more class de alignment. It's that in
Speaker 1: the past you could have predicted, okay, based on your income.
Speaker 1: If you're lower income, you're more likely to be a
Speaker 1: Democratic Party supporter, certainly during the New Deal era, because
Speaker 1: that's where your material interests lie. Increasingly, you just can't predict,
Speaker 1: like it's just sort of like a toss up. You
Speaker 1: can't tell anything based on someone's income. They might be
Speaker 1: a Republican, they might be a Democrat. And so it's
Speaker 1: less that there's a you know, all these voters flocking
Speaker 1: to the Republican Party and more that there's just a
Speaker 1: reversion to a fifty to fifty split because neither party
Speaker 1: is dealing directly with people's material interests in a way
Speaker 1: that they feel in a concrete, immediate way today.
Speaker 3: I don't blame it.
Speaker 2: How can you, you know, whenever you look at the
Speaker 2: issue set, that's not really what's up for grabs, especially
Speaker 2: for our politicians. I wish it wasn't that way, but
Speaker 2: it certainly is. Class d alignment is an excellent, excellent point,
Speaker 2: and it fits with something I've been trying to hammer
Speaker 2: home here for years now, which is we're mostly polarized
Speaker 2: on educational lies. If you went to a four year
Speaker 2: college degree, you're probably going to vote for a Democrat.
Speaker 2: If you didn't, you're probably going to be a Republican.
Speaker 2: Absent fact, if you are a black voter, but you
Speaker 2: know in Hispanic sort of converging towards that trend Black
Speaker 2: even younger black voters are starting to converge to that
Speaker 2: trend white voters.
Speaker 3: That is entirely where the split is.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm so fascinated here to see the non
Speaker 2: white voter where it's almost it's mostly concentrated, where they
Speaker 2: would still vote Democrat even if they did not attend
Speaker 2: a four year college degree institution. Well, in this case,
Speaker 2: and I always tell this that doesn't mean they're gonna
Speaker 2: be Republican.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: Other Republicans were listening who are like, yeah, absolutely, they
Speaker 2: just may not vote. And there's one hundred million people
Speaker 2: in this country don't vote. A lot of people don't vote.
Speaker 2: I've not voted in the past because I just didn't care.
Speaker 2: And I actually think that is an afirmative choice, you
Speaker 2: know for many people I which I do not judge
Speaker 2: really at all, which is I'm checking out, And that's
Speaker 2: a feeling overwhelmingly where it's a feeling. It's a real
Speaker 2: undermining of faith in our democracy, and it's one where increasingly,
Speaker 2: the more partisan that we become, we will accelerate class
Speaker 2: d alignment and will probably accelerate the non white voting
Speaker 2: or the non voting trend, even more so than where
Speaker 2: it is right now, which is actually a catastrophe in
Speaker 2: the long run.
Speaker 3: I mean a civil engagement.
Speaker 1: Ironically, because Trump is such a cult touchstone and like
Speaker 1: you know, made politics culture and vice versa, voting participation
Speaker 1: has been up in the Trump era. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very high in twenty twenty. Actually, in a
Speaker 1: lot of these special elections that we've been tracking that
Speaker 1: have centered around abortion, turnout has been extremely high, so
Speaker 1: there's been there's actually been an increase in the level
Speaker 1: of engagement. But it'll be interesting to see if that
Speaker 1: holds in this election when you have so much dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: with both of these choices, and it's really going to
Speaker 1: turn on the voters who hate both of these men,
Speaker 1: you know, assuming it's Trump and Biden who are facing
Speaker 1: off again, which certainly looks like the most plausible outcome
Speaker 1: at this point. Those people who hate both of them,
Speaker 1: who do they break for? That's probably going to be
Speaker 1: the determinive factor, given the fact that you know, both
Speaker 1: of them have like thirty something percent of roval ratings
Speaker 1: both of them. People are like, really, you're going to
Speaker 1: run again? Nobody wants you, like, please move on? Can
Speaker 1: we please have some other choices? And yet here we
Speaker 1: are locked into this battle between these guys. Let me
Speaker 1: also put this next piece up on the screen, which
Speaker 1: is funny, amusing and also sad. I know. NBC News, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the headline. Democratic elites struggle to get voters as
Speaker 1: excited about Biden as they are now. I question whether
Speaker 1: they are actually that excited about Joe Biden. I am
Speaker 1: a little skeptical that they I mean, these are not
Speaker 1: stupid people. They can see his shortcomings in terms of
Speaker 1: his vigor that was a good word to use the
Speaker 1: other day saga, in terms of his sort of like
Speaker 1: presidential vigor, et cetera. I mean, they can see that
Speaker 1: he's not the most exciting, charismatic figure. So I'm a
Speaker 1: little skeptical that these Democratic elites are as excited as
Speaker 1: NBC News is reporting them to be. But they're trying
Speaker 1: very hard to convince the electorate that, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a great affirmative choice, that this is the best
Speaker 1: person that the Democratic Party could possibly put forward, and
Speaker 1: they're having difficulties getting voters to buy into this. There's
Speaker 1: one individual, one guy Rich Thou, who ran a focused
Speaker 1: group in may have swing voters that'd switched from Trump
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen to Biden twenty twenty. He said, the
Speaker 1: analogy I like to use is Trump and Biden are
Speaker 1: like the fifth place team playing the sixth place team,
Speaker 1: and you're required to root for one of them. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of quotes from voters in here who are
Speaker 1: basically like the same. I mean, people were like, I'll
Speaker 1: vote for Biden if that's who it ends up being,
Speaker 1: but I really wish there was another choice. So a
Speaker 1: lot of dissatisfaction is don't forget the R.
Speaker 2: Hillary in many respects lost some of the close states
Speaker 2: just because a lot of black voters just didn't vote.
Speaker 2: A lot of them didn't come out to vote in
Speaker 2: Detroit or Milwaukee or any of these places where was a razor
Speaker 2: thin margin, and Trump was able to win Michigan, and
Speaker 2: he was able to win Wisconsin. Turn Low turnout in
Speaker 2: the city of Philadelphia almost certainly cost Hillary the state
Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania. So it's one of those where I mean,
Speaker 2: of course the Democrats, many of them turned around and
Speaker 2: they're like, no, it's your fault for staying at home.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, well, maybe vote. Motivate them, you know,
Speaker 3: actually get them to come out to the polls.
Speaker 2: I could see a scenario right here where Biden puts
Speaker 2: himself right back in that situation.
Speaker 3: Look at Georgia.
Speaker 2: I mean, last time I checked a lot of black
Speaker 2: Democrats in the state of Georgia. If younger voters don't
Speaker 2: come out, okay, Trump just won Georgia.
Speaker 3: Same in Arizona.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could see the exact same thing scenario
Speaker 2: playing out with Hispanic voters, So Nevada, any.
Speaker 3: Of these states.
Speaker 2: When you're playing with fire like this, you just have
Speaker 2: no idea what things are going to look like on
Speaker 2: election day, and you're setting yourself up very much for failure.
Speaker 2: So it's one of those trends where, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is probably one of the most important voting trends in
Speaker 2: I mean, as you put it in this centry, it.
Speaker 3: Is literally a complete relime and d line and whatever
Speaker 3: the hell you want to call it.
Speaker 2: But it is a change, and it's a major change
Speaker 2: in the way that people vote in this country.
Speaker 1: They said in the New York Times piece, those tallies
Speaker 1: of non white voters might be the worst for a
Speaker 1: Democratic leader among black and Hispanic voters since Walter Mondale
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty, just to give you a sense of
Speaker 1: how this is all looking. And the Democrats are so
Speaker 1: terrified of any kind of democracy. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden wants to keep his hold on power. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know that is what it is. But they really
Speaker 1: believe that by opening up an actual, real democratic prime
Speaker 1: and process that they stand to lose from that. And
Speaker 1: I just can't wrap my head around that being the
Speaker 1: case when voters are so eager and anxious, and we've
Speaker 1: got new numbers this morning from CNN, still a majority
Speaker 1: of Democratic voters saying, we really want someone else. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, if this is your guy and he earns
Speaker 1: his place and they evaluate their other options and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what, Joe is the best guy. You're also
Speaker 1: going to generate more enthusiasm for him if people don't
Speaker 1: feel like he's just being foisted on them and they
Speaker 1: have no other choice. So, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: if their goal, and it's a big question mark whether
Speaker 1: really their number one goal is to defeat Trump, but
Speaker 1: if that is their goal, I really think they're handstraining
Speaker 1: themselves by closing off even the possibility of an open
Speaker 1: Democratic primary choice. However, part of the reason why they
Speaker 1: so adamantly want to maintain this, like iron grip on,
Speaker 1: we will not consider anyone other than Joe Biden, is
Speaker 1: that if they don't do that, then the next logical
Speaker 1: person in line is Kamala Harris. And as much as
Speaker 1: Biden is, you know, looking fairly weak against Trump, the
Speaker 1: numbers bear out that Kamala Harris is much weaker against Trump,
Speaker 1: whereas Biden is head to head. Kamala in the average
Speaker 1: of polls is losing to Trump. And I'll show you
Speaker 1: some of those numbers in a moment. And it also
Speaker 1: is a problem directly for Joe Biden because of course,
Speaker 1: people are looking at the actuarial tables, they are, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at his manifestic line, and they're thinking about, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't make it, who's next in line? And
Speaker 1: it's Kamala Harris, who again has even less esteem among
Speaker 1: the voting public. But she got asked recently is she
Speaker 1: ready to take over if that happens, if he is
Speaker 1: unable to make it through the term. Let's listen to
Speaker 1: what she had to say.
Speaker 2: The question for the president's age often go hand and
Speaker 2: hand with questions about how you step in the role,
Speaker 2: you know, if necessary, Do you feel prepared for that
Speaker 2: possibility as.
Speaker 3: Sermon as vice president? Prepared you for that job?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: And well, how would you describe that process?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, let's I'm answering your hypothetical. But
Speaker 4: Joe Biden's going to be fine, so that is not
Speaker 4: going to come to fruition. But let us also understand
Speaker 4: that every vice president, every vice president understands that when
Speaker 4: they take the oath that they must be very clear
Speaker 4: about the responsibility they may have to take over the
Speaker 4: job of being president. I am no different.
Speaker 1: So she's staying there. She's ready to take over if
Speaker 1: Biden doesn't make it through. And as I said, I
Speaker 1: think that's also an important factor in this election when
Speaker 1: you have, you know, president where huge concerns about his
Speaker 1: age from across the board. Republicans, Independence and Democrats put
Speaker 1: this up on the train and thought this was a
Speaker 1: good insight from Nate Silver. He points out that Democrats
Speaker 1: think Kamala Harris would lose to Trump. Woul say, they
Speaker 1: are probably right. The subtext of why there was no
Speaker 1: serious primary challenge to Biden is that, you know, Kamala
Speaker 1: would be seen as the next in line. It would
Speaker 1: be politically got This is something we've been flagging for
Speaker 1: a long time, by the way, that it would be
Speaker 1: politically awkward to supplant the first female black vice president
Speaker 1: for Gavin Newsom or whoever to jump the line in
Speaker 1: front of her. That would be very politically awkward. But
Speaker 1: you can see here Biden is tied forty four to
Speaker 1: forty four with Trump in these poles Harris trails him
Speaker 1: forty two to forty six. Silver goes on to say,
Speaker 1: it's not that big a difference, I guess, but a
Speaker 1: net margin of four points is a fairly big deal.
Speaker 1: More likely than not that the next election will come
Speaker 1: down to four points or less in the tipping point states.
Speaker 1: So that is a significant disadvantage for Kamala Harris. And
Speaker 1: this is part of why Sager. I know, listen, I
Speaker 1: know people are concerned about Joe Biden's age. I think
Speaker 1: this is legitimate, absolutely, I think this is an important
Speaker 1: factor in why you're so close with Trump, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: I think there's more going on here than just the age.
Speaker 1: Because also, if you look at not just Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: but a whole variety of Democrats who are younger than
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, it's not like they do way better than
Speaker 1: he does in the polls. And Harris is the perfect
Speaker 1: case in point. I mean, she's carrying the Biden Harris
Speaker 1: agenda right now. She is much younger than Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: and she performs meaningfully worse than him in the polls.
Speaker 1: So I think if people really felt the benefits of
Speaker 1: his policies in their bank accounts, then the age would
Speaker 1: become less of an important factor. But since so much
Speaker 1: of our politics is like vibes and whatever, then you know,
Speaker 1: the age and the lack of vigor land becomes the
Speaker 1: default explanation for why people are feeling unsettled about another
Speaker 1: Biden president.
Speaker 2: Well, I think they look that's a baked in absolutely
Speaker 2: or correct. It's also with Kamlas She's an incredibly untalented politician.
Speaker 3: And I've been thinking about it.
Speaker 2: I think it might be one of the biggest mistakes
Speaker 2: he has made for his entire career was picking Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris as a vice president, bowing to pressure from Jim
Speaker 2: Cliburn during BLM. He would have been better off picking
Speaker 2: just some normy Democrat like aiming Listen, I'm not saying
Speaker 2: I like these people. I'm talking about just peer politically
Speaker 2: Whitmer or Amy Klobuchar, any of these people, and now
Speaker 2: we would be in this situation. And if he didn't
Speaker 2: want to run Democrats, I mean, look, I don't think
Speaker 2: Amyklovitro would be particularly strong, but I think she'd be
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot stronger than Kamala Harris. I
Speaker 2: don't know if she would win against Trump. But I
Speaker 2: mean with Kamala, I know, I know that she won't
Speaker 2: win against Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even Whitmer. I mean, look, I can't stany Gretchen Whitmer.
Speaker 2: There's a whole lot of stuff going with her kidnapping
Speaker 2: case and all that other stuff. She did win reelection,
Speaker 2: and in Michigan she did quite well. I didn't think
Speaker 2: she would survive given all that stuff that was going
Speaker 2: on COVID.
Speaker 3: I was totally wrong about that.
Speaker 2: So you have somebody here, midwestern, normy Ish Democrat was
Speaker 2: able to get re elected. That's what actual points on
Speaker 2: the score award looked like for Kamala Harris. I mean
Speaker 2: she was even her election it's fake. I mean, she
Speaker 2: didn't win a real primary process in California. She just
Speaker 2: foisted upon the California Democratic Party. She'd never face any
Speaker 2: real competition. The only competition that was so heavy in
Speaker 2: the first place she had to drop out of in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, where she was pulling lower than Andrew Yang
Speaker 2: in her own home state.
Speaker 3: That's humiliating.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just no even in her home state,
Speaker 2: there's no way she would even win against Gavin Newsom
Speaker 2: in the head to head election. So why are we
Speaker 2: picking this person for the actual mantle. I mean, we
Speaker 2: all know why. It's a complete you know, identity politics pick.
Speaker 2: And now look, they've this was the payout to do
Speaker 2: the into this into this corner. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It was the payback to Jim Clyber, you know, who
Speaker 1: basically won the election, the primary election for Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: and so this was, you know, this was the big
Speaker 1: the big payback for him to get a candidate that
Speaker 1: he wanted into the vice presidential position. I always think
Speaker 1: about there was a reporting that Jill Biden, Doctor Jill
Speaker 1: Biden was like, don't pick her, and she was right.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we are where we are. So that is
Speaker 1: part of why they've been so adamant about no primary process,
Speaker 1: about yeah, we're going with Joe, even though you know,
Speaker 1: by far the oldest president we've ever had, even though
Speaker 1: you know, there's manifest weakness among not just the general
Speaker 1: electorate but also among the Democratic primary electorate. This is
Speaker 1: a big important part of that. And the fact that
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris has such low favorability ratings and low approval
Speaker 1: ratings among all voters is another challenging factor for Joe
Speaker 1: Biden when there are so many concerns about his age. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's turn to the other party, because we got some
Speaker 1: interesting pulling out just this morning from CNN with what
Speaker 1: they call trial heats of different contenders, Republican primary contenders,
Speaker 1: how they would fare trying to get at who is
Speaker 1: the most electable on the Republican side. Let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Steve Kornaki tweeted this out. But
Speaker 1: this is a CNN poll, so you've got Trump Vive Biden.
Speaker 1: Trump is at forty seven, Biden's at forty six, DeSantis
Speaker 1: Vie Biden. It's basically tied. So actually Trump is I mean,
Speaker 1: this is all within the margin of error these two,
Speaker 1: so you could say they're basically the same. But if
Speaker 1: you take the numbers at face value, Trump actually does
Speaker 1: a little better of a guns Biden than DeSantis does.
Speaker 1: The standout one here is Nikki Haley, who wins by
Speaker 1: a six point margin in this trial heat. So Haley's
Speaker 1: at forty nine and Biden's at forty three. Pence is
Speaker 1: at forty six and Biden's at forty four, so he
Speaker 1: does a little better than Trump. Again, these are small
Speaker 1: differences but important. Tim Scott forty six, Biden forty four,
Speaker 1: So same as Mike Pence. Biden beats the vag Ramaswami
Speaker 1: forty six, forty five. Again that basically you put that
Speaker 1: at a jump ball, and Chris Christy does relatively well
Speaker 1: forty four percent, Biden forty two percent. But the real
Speaker 1: standout candidate here that looks a little bit different, and
Speaker 1: who I'm sure we'll be happy to make a very
Speaker 1: sertive case that she is the electable candidate is Nicky
Speaker 1: Haley at forty nine percent and Joe Biden at forty
Speaker 1: three percent, which tells you, you know, certainly her first debate
Speaker 1: performance did her some favors with the general public. And
Speaker 1: I also think it's funny Sara like Nikki Haley, you
Speaker 1: can't really classify her as a moderate in any real
Speaker 1: sense of the word. But because you have the media
Speaker 1: just like basically asserting this person is a moderate, people
Speaker 1: effectively believe it and are like, oh, she seems reasonable.
Speaker 2: Here's why I takeaway. I wouldn't even put the Haley
Speaker 2: thing in there. The margin of error on this thing
Speaker 2: is three point five. You know what I'm saying. Generic
Speaker 2: r beats Biden and or ties Biden. That's a disaster
Speaker 2: for Biden. We've got a generic Republican here, which is effectively,
Speaker 2: if you put Trump and DeSantis and Ramason and all
Speaker 2: these people together and you're tied within the margin of error,
Speaker 2: or it's that close Hailey slightly outside the margin of error. There,
Speaker 2: every single one of them either beats Biden or side
Speaker 2: with Biden. That's terrible for Biden. I mean, because it's
Speaker 2: one of those where the Biden case was, and especially
Speaker 2: why the media and everybody else wants Trump in many
Speaker 2: ways to be the nominees because they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: he's the only one, that he's the weakest Republican in
Speaker 2: this field. No, I think that Biden himself is weak,
Speaker 2: and it shows that even a generic R regardless of baggage,
Speaker 2: whatever that is, it's plus or mindus, not nearly as
Speaker 2: much as a lot of people would like to think,
Speaker 2: which means if people are so dissatisfied with the current
Speaker 2: status quo, they are willing to look anybody else.
Speaker 3: And give them a chance. That's really what I read
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 2: With seeing every single candidate either tie or come within
Speaker 2: a point of this person in the margin, I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's that's really bad.
Speaker 1: I do think that Nicky Haley thing is interesting though,
Speaker 1: because she does stand out here as having the most
Speaker 1: significant margin over Biden, I mean, six percentage points. It's
Speaker 1: outside the margin of error. It's very different than you know,
Speaker 1: the Trump and DeSantis who are basically tied with him,
Speaker 1: and what I think it's a real problem for It's
Speaker 1: a real problem for DeSantis because he to his pitch
Speaker 1: was electability and he is at best no more electable
Speaker 1: than Trump, and at worst Trump actually does a little
Speaker 1: bit better than him. And in terms of the donor class,
Speaker 1: there was a big report this week about how what
Speaker 1: was it like sixty percent of Ron DeSantis's big money
Speaker 1: donors have moved on. The candidate who's got all the
Speaker 1: media love coming out of the Republican debates was Nikki Haley.
Speaker 1: Certainly seems like Robert Murdoch and his empire are giving
Speaker 1: her a very very hard look. A lot of you know,
Speaker 1: media love and acclaim for her coming out of that
Speaker 1: debate and so and she has come up in the polls.
Speaker 1: I mean, she was the person the VIC didn't end
Speaker 1: up really getting a.
Speaker 3: Bump out of the result Trump of the.
Speaker 1: Polls after that primary debate, because I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think the people who liked his performance and said
Speaker 1: he won the debate, they're already supporting Donald Trump. So
Speaker 1: he didn't actually grow very much out of that. But
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley was the person who most consistently across the
Speaker 1: polls got somewhat of a bump to challenge DeSantis's number
Speaker 1: two position. And so for that slice of the electorate
Speaker 1: that's looking for a Trump alternative, for whom electability is important,
Speaker 1: you know, this is going to be a very important
Speaker 1: metric for them. Now. As I have said a million
Speaker 1: times at nauseum, I think Donald Trump is going to
Speaker 1: be the Republican nominee absence some unforeseen circumstance. However, if
Speaker 1: there is some unforeseen circumstance, it will matter who has
Speaker 1: put pulled themselves into that number two position. And Nicky Haley,
Speaker 1: based on you know, a media effort to really cheerlead
Speaker 1: her performance there and a lot of media comfort, especially
Speaker 1: conservative media comfort, with her political ideology and positions, is
Speaker 1: increasingly challenging DeSantis in that new number two slot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to reach to is how
Speaker 2: bad this is for DeSantis? Where if every single other
Speaker 2: person in the GOP race can say I also have
Speaker 2: a credible chance of beating Biden, and especially somebody like
Speaker 2: Haley or Scott or Ramaswamy. Yeah, then why are you running, dude?
Speaker 2: And now it actually takes away the two man race.
Speaker 2: The way that we would originally cover the race, the
Speaker 2: GOP race is it's Trump, and then it was DeSantis,
Speaker 2: and then there's everybody else, and then Ramaswamy started to
Speaker 2: kick up to his heels. Now you've got Haley coming
Speaker 2: up there as well. Now it's like a three four
Speaker 2: way tie for number two depending on which state they're
Speaker 2: looking at and the overall number.
Speaker 3: That's really bad.
Speaker 2: And actually it only helps Trump because Trump is sitting
Speaker 2: pretty above all of them as sixty percent, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: all these little kids are squabbling for my number two,
Speaker 2: and it's like, okay, that's cute. You know, it only
Speaker 2: elevates his position as the front runner. To have multiple
Speaker 2: quote unquote credible alternatives as opposed to the one credible
Speaker 2: alternative were like, this is the guy who actually could
Speaker 2: be able to do it. So, yeah, that's a great
Speaker 2: way to read it. But man, the weakness for Biden
Speaker 2: in this is just stunning. It's stunning to look at, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that you're losing to every single one of these guys.
Speaker 3: Shocking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I Mean, the one thing I will say on the
Speaker 1: other side, just to make the other case, is that
Speaker 1: Democrats outperform the polls in the midterms. Yeah, yeah, Loo,
Speaker 1: And they've outperformed the polls in the special elections elections
Speaker 1: this year. And it seems like abortion is more of
Speaker 1: a factor for voters than even is showing up in
Speaker 1: the polls. So I don't want anyone to feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a slam dunk for Republicans. On the other side,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true whatsoever. I still think that Biden,
Speaker 1: just being the incumbent president, and given what we've seen
Speaker 1: with abortion, I still believe that he likely has the
Speaker 1: edge for re election, very dependent on economic conditions ultimately,
Speaker 1: but the fact that he is an incumbent president, the
Speaker 1: fact that he's running most likely against you know, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who's facing ninety one different charges, and then everybody hated
Speaker 1: you know, January sixth, and the chaos and all of
Speaker 1: the baggage that Trump brings to it, that it's a
Speaker 1: jump ball is really embarrassing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: I actually put it mostly a fifty to fifty just
Speaker 2: because of uncertain economic conditions.
Speaker 3: We have no idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, the price of diesel right now is going
Speaker 2: through the roof. I think inflation is going to come
Speaker 2: roaring back per se, It's going to remain sticky. Who
Speaker 2: the hell knows what's going to go on with Ukraine.
Speaker 2: We know that Biden's are going to change the policy
Speaker 2: anytime soon. You're really just one geopolitical disaster five six
Speaker 2: dollars a gallon away from total loss to wipe out
Speaker 2: in the general election. So it's one of those where
Speaker 2: considering the uncertainty that remains ahead specifically economically, and we
Speaker 2: could go into a full blown recession. You know, we
Speaker 2: could get to five six percent unemployment with persistent and
Speaker 2: inflation that's really bad. On top of that, with a
Speaker 2: geopolitical crisis and high gas prices. All of these are
Speaker 2: you know, within the probability window of not that far away.
Speaker 2: These are not like tail end type of things. These
Speaker 2: are just one two. You know, we're looking at like
Speaker 2: you go ten percent in this direction, temperason the other way.
Speaker 2: As I've said too, you can give the other side
Speaker 2: of that where maybe things calm down in Ukraine, something
Speaker 2: goes down, gas goes to two fifty, inflation start to
Speaker 2: go down, unemployment remains steady. All of that, the economy
Speaker 2: actually looks okay. Sure, I could see them getting reelected.
Speaker 1: To Unfortunately, I don't think that if the status quo
Speaker 1: remains in Ukraine, I would like for people to care
Speaker 1: more about it in terms of a voting issue. I
Speaker 1: don't really think that if it, if it maintains in
Speaker 1: this sort of like status quos area that it is
Speaker 1: right now. I think the economic conditions are likely way
Speaker 1: more important.
Speaker 2: The only reason I put it in there is it's
Speaker 2: like Afghanistan. Nobody gave a shit about Afghanistan until everybody
Speaker 2: cared about Afghanistan. So it's you're only one major news
Speaker 2: event away from it dominating everything. And that's always been
Speaker 2: my issue with Ukraine. I'm like, you don't know what
Speaker 2: you're setting yourself up for. Yeah, it's a slow burn
Speaker 2: now eighteen months, but then hook you know, one thing
Speaker 2: goes south, nuclear power plant explodes, gets bombed accidentally. One
Speaker 2: f sixteen just happens to bomb Russia. We're in a
Speaker 2: whole other situation, a whole New World.
Speaker 3: The whole glow.
Speaker 2: You know, the entire earth is captivated by that news.
Speaker 2: I can easily lose you an election.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Listen, there's a lot of unknowns. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of crazy things that no one could imagine
Speaker 1: that are going to transpire between now an election day,
Speaker 1: and they could cut in either direction.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Let's talk about McConnell man.
Speaker 2: The aging problem in Congress right now, and not just Congress,
Speaker 2: in our price and see throughout all of our political
Speaker 2: elite is just so disgusting and shocking, and the lack
Speaker 2: of transparency here on this issue is one where they
Speaker 2: have contempt for you.
Speaker 3: He doesn't care what you think.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is he was willing to give
Speaker 2: a behind the scenes Q and A for five minutes
Speaker 2: to his colleagues about his health condition, but when members
Speaker 2: of the press, on behalf of the public ask him
Speaker 2: for details of his health condition, he doesn't give us
Speaker 2: any details. He only tells us what he doesn't have,
Speaker 2: not what he actually does have. Here he is being
Speaker 2: questioned by the press yesterday. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: You know what it is.
Speaker 3: We've had all these evaluations.
Speaker 4: What a doctor said is the precise medical reason for
Speaker 4: those two free zumps.
Speaker 6: What doctor Monihane's report addressed was concerns people might have.
Speaker 6: It's some things that happened to me, did happen they didn't,
Speaker 6: And there's really I have nothing to add to that.
Speaker 6: Think you pretty well covered the subject.
Speaker 4: You what do you say to those who all you
Speaker 4: got you to step down?
Speaker 3: Do you have any plans to retire anytime soon?
Speaker 6: I have no announcements to make on that subject.
Speaker 3: What do you say to those who are I'm.
Speaker 6: Going to finish my term as leader, and I'm going
Speaker 6: to finish my senate term. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm going to finish my senate term, Crystal.
Speaker 2: And what the doctors have said is the precise medical
Speaker 2: reason for the freeze ups Well, they said all the
Speaker 2: things that people concerned about, and it's none of those, So.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: And look, you don't have to be a medical doctor
Speaker 2: to know that that is complete.
Speaker 3: BS. What do you have, dude?
Speaker 2: It ain't dehydration, as doctor rand Paul had to say.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's very noteworthy that one of
Speaker 2: the people, not only is he his colleague, same state senator. Yeah,
Speaker 2: probably a little bit more of an inkling about what's
Speaker 2: going on. He's a freaking board certified physician, and he's like, listen, man,
Speaker 2: that there is no way and once you know the
Speaker 2: thing is too is let's even put that you don't
Speaker 2: have to be a doctor to know that that's not
Speaker 2: what dehydration looks like. Two separate times during the course,
Speaker 2: he also claims Crystal behind the scenes, he's only in
Speaker 2: two freeze up.
Speaker 3: So they just happened to be in front of the camera.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, sure, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, just so happened whenever you were on the camera.
Speaker 2: I mean, how money moments of this man's life are
Speaker 2: not on camera, And so then you ask yourself, like,
Speaker 2: what is the likelihood that this medical flare up would
Speaker 2: only ever happen.
Speaker 3: You know, in this one specific scenario. Just ridiculous. And look, look, luckily,
Speaker 3: I've actually been very heartened by this.
Speaker 2: Some GOP senators like rand Paul Josh Holly, who are
Speaker 2: about to show you they've had enough. This Halle in particular,
Speaker 2: actually made a great point here. We're about to show you.
Speaker 2: He's like, listen, everybody, He's like, ahmind, constituents, everyone's asking
Speaker 2: me about this, And I love that because It's one
Speaker 2: of those actual small de democratic checks where real people
Speaker 2: are like, hey man, this is crazy, Like what are
Speaker 2: you guys going to do about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's what he had to say in the center hallway.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can have it both ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're concerned about the president's ability to do job,
Speaker 1: and I am, and a lot of Republicans say they are,
Speaker 1: and you've got to be concerning what it's somebody from
Speaker 1: your own party, right, I mean, it can't be sauce.
Speaker 3: For the goose but not for the gander. Is he
Speaker 3: able to do the job? I mean, he's going to
Speaker 3: have to answer that question. Do I think he should
Speaker 3: be a leader? No?
Speaker 2: No, I mean, to be fair, Polly voted against him
Speaker 2: and clearly doesn't mind the blowback that he's going to get.
Speaker 2: As I alluded to, let's put this up there, Paul
Speaker 2: is just actually pulling no punches. He says, quote, my
Speaker 2: point is I'm just trying to counter the misinformation from
Speaker 2: the Senate doctor. Wow, it is basically not believable to
Speaker 2: come up and say what's going on is dehydration.
Speaker 3: It makes it worse, right, And yeah, good, thank God?
Speaker 2: And Christal, you have a little bit of the backstory
Speaker 2: here about one of the reasons maybe why McConnell won't
Speaker 2: step down. Yeah, it's because the governor is refusing to
Speaker 2: say that he would appoint you Republican. I'm still a
Speaker 2: little confused on what that meant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let me explain what's going on behind the
Speaker 1: scenes in the state of Kentucky, which has not only
Speaker 1: has a democratic governor, actually Andy Wassheer as one of
Speaker 1: the highest profratings of an governor in the country. He's
Speaker 1: up for reelection this fall, so like months away from reelection,
Speaker 1: polls have him ahead. We'll see what happened. So that's
Speaker 1: an interesting story in and of itself. But the backstory
Speaker 1: here is that I think roughly a year ago, right
Speaker 1: around the time, remember there were those pictures coming out
Speaker 1: of McConnell with those hands were like black and blue,
Speaker 1: remember that, And people were like, what's going on with
Speaker 1: this health At this point, there was a piece of
Speaker 1: legislation passed through the Kentucky legislature, which is Republican dominee.
Speaker 1: Republicans have a super majority in the House, that changed
Speaker 1: the way that appointments to Senate seats work. So previously
Speaker 1: the governor, who again is a Democrat at this point,
Speaker 1: would have carte blanche of being able to fill the
Speaker 1: seat with whoever he wants and then, you know, schedule
Speaker 1: a special election to more permanently fill the seat. They
Speaker 1: changed it so that the legislature, or the Republican dominated legislature,
Speaker 1: would pick three different candidates, all of whom I'm sure
Speaker 1: would be a Republican, and then the governor would have
Speaker 1: to pick from amongst those three and it it's selected
Speaker 1: by the legislature. So Andy basheer vetoed this piece of
Speaker 1: legislation saying this is not constitutional. It used to be
Speaker 1: that senators were chosen directly by the state legislature, but
Speaker 1: I believe it's the seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution says
Speaker 1: that this will you know that that's not how it's done,
Speaker 1: and if there needs to be an appointment, it will
Speaker 1: be handled by the state executive. So he is saying
Speaker 1: it's not constitutional that I get to say that's what
Speaker 1: the constitution says, and you can't limit my choices like that.
Speaker 1: There's also a provision in the Kentucky State Constitution that
Speaker 1: he pointed to as well. Now he has gotten questions
Speaker 1: about if there is a vacancy here because of Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell's health, what will you do, And he's basically refused
Speaker 1: to say whether he would pick from the list given
Speaker 1: to him by the legislature, whether he would challenge the
Speaker 1: statute in court, whether he would just pick someone else
Speaker 1: and then let them challenge him, what exactly he would do.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, this is touchy for him because
Speaker 1: it's a state but where he's popular and facing reelection,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So he's trying to navigate that as well.
Speaker 1: So it's comments specifically were there is no senate vacancy.
Speaker 1: Senator mc connell has said he's going to serve on
Speaker 1: his term and I believe him, So I'm not going
Speaker 1: to speculate about something that hasn't happened and isn't going
Speaker 1: to happen. Asked whether voters deserve to know his stance
Speaker 1: on the issue, but Sheer said he would not quote
Speaker 1: sensationalize McConnell's health. So that's kind of where things stand
Speaker 1: right now. This could end up in, you know, if
Speaker 1: there was a vacancy there could end up in basically
Speaker 1: like a messy legal battle in terms of who is
Speaker 1: chosen to fill the seat. So that's the backstory in
Speaker 1: terms of Kentucky. To go back just to the central
Speaker 1: issue here though, about McConnell's health. First of all, if
Speaker 1: you look at pictures of him now versus just not
Speaker 1: that long ago, it is crazy. I mean, and you
Speaker 1: can see we all have had loved ones, elderly loved
Speaker 1: ones in our lives that you see this happen. There's
Speaker 1: like a point where you know, it's just it goes
Speaker 1: downhill pretty quickly and it is sad, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not particularly like, I have no love for Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 1: but it's still even with him hard to watch. These
Speaker 1: on camera freeze ups are really horrifying. So for him
Speaker 1: to try to gaslight everybody of like, well, it's not
Speaker 1: a seizure, so don't worry about it's not a stroke,
Speaker 1: so don't worry about it. But I'm not going to
Speaker 1: affirmatively tell you what is going on. Listen, It's possible
Speaker 1: that whatever is happening here is consistent with him being
Speaker 1: able to perform the duties of what is an incredibly
Speaker 1: important job with a lot of power. But the American
Speaker 1: people deserve to know what is actually going on so
Speaker 1: that they can make that determination for themselves, and so
Speaker 1: you know, I know, we can harp on these age
Speaker 1: issues sometimes we've been talking about with Biden, We've been
Speaker 1: talking about for a long time with Finestein. I talked
Speaker 1: about with McConnell. You did a fantastic monologue about the
Speaker 1: overall age creeping up and up and up of the
Speaker 1: United States Senate in particular. But in some ways it
Speaker 1: is just such a central symptom of the decline of
Speaker 1: our country and the breakdown of actual democracy in the country.
Speaker 1: Because it's Mitch McConnell has a very low approval rating
Speaker 1: in the state of Kentucky, and yeah, he's still there.
Speaker 1: Diane Feinstein, California voters do not want Dian Feinstein representing them,
Speaker 1: which she's not even doing at this point. In the state,
Speaker 1: voters are saying with both Trump and Biden, I mean,
Speaker 1: Trump's not a young man either, that they're worried about
Speaker 1: their age. Now they're more worried about Biden. But voters
Speaker 1: are overwhelming and saying we want different choices than that,
Speaker 1: and yet we seem locked into this sclerotic system where
Speaker 1: we have to watch these people on camera rought in
Speaker 1: decay before our eyes.
Speaker 2: It is very troubled, it's sad, and it actually recalls
Speaker 2: the original debate around the seventeenth Amendment.
Speaker 3: We don't have the poster anymore. I used to have it.
Speaker 2: The William Jennings Bryan you know, William Jennings Bryan in
Speaker 2: the Populast Party back in the eighteen nineties were the
Speaker 2: people who directly advocated for the eventual seventeenth Amendment because
Speaker 2: they correctly called out that the corruption of the Gilded
Speaker 2: Age made it so that people could just buy their sentencies,
Speaker 2: which is what's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people should.
Speaker 2: If you've never heard of him, look up a guy
Speaker 2: named Mark Hannah or any of these other titans of
Speaker 2: that time period who were able to just you know,
Speaker 2: finagle by Senate seats. One of my favorite stories is
Speaker 2: the William Randolph Hurst, who is the eventual newspaper Magne.
Speaker 2: His father was a very rich man in California. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it got to be a senator, and he just bought
Speaker 2: the Senate seat outright, and he died as a senator.
Speaker 2: I mean it must be nice, right, whenever you had
Speaker 2: a ton of money. They directly advocated for popular election
Speaker 2: because they saw how corrupt the state legislature system was.
Speaker 2: And it reminds me really this age issue around the
Speaker 2: same things where by the eighteen nineties and the eventual
Speaker 2: passage of the seventeenth Amendment, it was undeniable.
Speaker 3: This is ludicrous and the people were fed up with it.
Speaker 3: We have got to.
Speaker 2: Get to that point, and we're reaching similar systemic levels
Speaker 2: of insanity. Put this up there on the screen from
Speaker 2: Diane Feinstein. She spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle and
Speaker 2: she completely forgot that she had given the power of
Speaker 2: attorney to her daughter in the fight over her husband's estate.
Speaker 2: She says, quote, I gave no permission to do anything.
Speaker 2: This is one of those obstinate great grandma moments. Or
Speaker 2: she's like, no, I didn't. I didn't, I didn't say
Speaker 2: I wasn't gonna run, And then the staff is like,
Speaker 2: no you did, and she's like, oh, I did, okay,
Speaker 2: and it's like you're gone. She's gone, Like we're miles
Speaker 2: past that moment. Her mind is lost. It's very sad,
Speaker 2: and it would be sad if she was just still
Speaker 2: a great grandma and living her life. She's a multimillionaire.
Speaker 2: She cats you know I always say this, what are
Speaker 2: you doing here? Go to NAPA, Just relax, Nobody's gonna care.
Speaker 2: But you choose to put yourself through this. The people
Speaker 2: around you are so shameless to continue to prop you
Speaker 2: up this conspiracy with Pelosi in order to make sure
Speaker 2: that their candidate Adam Schiff gets the seat. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is jet I want people to really take that
Speaker 2: this is just as corruptive as we're going on in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety. Sure money's not changing hands, but democracy is
Speaker 2: being boarded at the highest level.
Speaker 3: It's just outrageous. And to totally biparisan problem.
Speaker 1: And to connect it back to, you know, the conversation
Speaker 1: about Biden and Trump and both of them refusing at
Speaker 1: this point to debate. Part of how Feinstein got reelected
Speaker 1: is she refused to debate. I mean she did not
Speaker 1: allow her allow the scrutiny of a true democratic process,
Speaker 1: small de democratic process, and she was not really elected
Speaker 1: based on this democratic will of the people. She was
Speaker 1: elected because there was a Democratic Party protection racket around
Speaker 1: her involving Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, even though the
Speaker 1: state Party wanted to move on and we're backing her
Speaker 1: opponent in that primary and probably knew a lot more
Speaker 1: of what was going on than the public do did
Speaker 1: at that point and in retrospect, and that's how she
Speaker 1: ends up back in that seat. And now it's clear
Speaker 1: as day the way that Pelosi in particular is protecting
Speaker 1: her like crazy. I mean, her daughter is like following
Speaker 1: Feinstein a round as our personal aid, et cetera, all
Speaker 1: because she shamelessly wants to make sure that Adam Schiff
Speaker 1: gets that seat over the other Democratic primary contenders. And
Speaker 1: so that's what we mean when we talk about this
Speaker 1: breakdown of democracy. Listen, maybe if she had done debates
Speaker 1: and the public had high an ability to evaluate her,
Speaker 1: maybe they still would have voted for her. It's certainly possible,
Speaker 1: but now we'll never know because they didn't have enough
Speaker 1: respect for the voters to go in front of him
Speaker 1: and actually allow them a real chance to evaluate this candidate.
Speaker 1: And it's not just here. It's with McConnell, it's with Biden,
Speaker 1: it's with Trump, it's with god knows how many others
Speaker 1: of these individuals, and you know, it really really is
Speaker 1: a disgrace. Yep. All right, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about some things that are going on. With the economy,
Speaker 1: which could end up being the biggest story of the
Speaker 1: coming years. This term doom loop is getting used now
Speaker 1: over and over again to describe basically a downward spiral,
Speaker 1: and specifically with regard to commercial real estate. Put this
Speaker 1: report up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: Their headline is real estate doom loop threatens America's banks.
Speaker 1: Regional banks exposure to commercial real estate is more substantial
Speaker 1: than it appears. So the Wall Street Journal did an
Speaker 1: analysis of the level of debt that was held by
Speaker 1: especially mid levels or regional banks, the level of commercial
Speaker 1: debt that they held, and also they say that in
Speaker 1: addition to that direct exposure, many of these banks also
Speaker 1: lent to financial companies that make loans to some of
Speaker 1: those same landlords and bonds backed by the same type
Speaker 1: of properties, and that indirect lending, if you include that
Speaker 1: amounts to equivalent and equivalent of twenty percent of their deposits.
Speaker 1: That gives you a sense of the massive amount of
Speaker 1: exposure that these regional banks have. Put the next chart
Speaker 1: up on the screen so people can visualize this. This,
Speaker 1: they say, is a cumulative change in commercial real estate
Speaker 1: exposure since March twenty fifteen, by bank size. This was
Speaker 1: based on analysis of FDIC data. You can see large
Speaker 1: banks have some exposure, but there are a much higher
Speaker 1: level of risk for the sort of regional and local
Speaker 1: banks which have already been made more vulnerable by FED
Speaker 1: interest rate hikes that you know, pushed some who were
Speaker 1: kind of outliers in a sense, but still could be
Speaker 1: canaries and the coal mine like Silicon Valley Bank over
Speaker 1: the edge. Now, as we've discussed before, the reason we're
Speaker 1: harping on commercial real estate in particular is because during COVID,
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of office workers worked from home, and
Speaker 1: now remote work and hybrid work schedules have left so
Speaker 1: much of big city office space vacant. The values of
Speaker 1: those buildings have collapsed and are continuing to collapse. We're
Speaker 1: seeing that in real time the number of sales of
Speaker 1: those type of properties is down like seventy percent, so
Speaker 1: it's just fallen off a cliff. Many people who hold
Speaker 1: these type of properties they're trying to wait out the storm,
Speaker 1: so they don't actually want to sell right now because
Speaker 1: they're kind of afraid of how bad the valuation would be.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, a lot of their debt
Speaker 1: comes due over the next couple of years, and if
Speaker 1: they did have to roll over and refinance, we now
Speaker 1: have much higher rates than what existed in the past.
Speaker 1: So they're under a massive amount of pressure. And that
Speaker 1: means that the banks that hold this debt are going
Speaker 1: to be under a massive amount of pressure. And it
Speaker 1: seems very unlikely at this point, given that you know,
Speaker 1: hybrid work schedules I think are here to stay, and
Speaker 1: given the difficulty of converting these spaces into residential units,
Speaker 1: it seems very difficult to imagine what gets them out
Speaker 1: of this terrible situation.
Speaker 3: Big problem.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of those where and by the way,
Speaker 2: I was not aware of how much of commercial real
Speaker 2: estate floats on variable interest loans. I guess everyone just
Speaker 2: got real comfortable, didn't they during twenty tents?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they like zero interest rate would last forever.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: I'm reading this and I'm like, did en nobody ever
Speaker 2: price in the fact that we could go to five percent,
Speaker 2: Because when you do, then the entire cast lost, like
Speaker 2: the cost projection of your property, takes a dive. Then
Speaker 2: you take and that's in normal times. Then you take
Speaker 2: a situation like COVID and you take a black swan event,
Speaker 2: you're getting absolutely wiped out, and the exposure here is wild.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking trillions and trillions of dollars across
Speaker 2: apartment and office and apartment lending, construction loans, small business loans,
Speaker 2: commercial mortgage backed securities, real estate investor loans, and then
Speaker 2: other assets linked to actual commercial properties. The Wall Street
Speaker 2: Journal has been doing fantastic work on this, and I
Speaker 2: just don't think that they and other analysts in the
Speaker 2: space won't continue to use doom loop unless.
Speaker 3: They mean it. I mean, and I look at this
Speaker 3: crystal and I.
Speaker 2: Just see basically no way out except for a bailout.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just no way that these real estate
Speaker 2: billionaires who have their entire fortunes that are pegged to
Speaker 2: their real estate asset portfolios. You really think you take
Speaker 2: a forty fifty percent haircut and they're gonna let the
Speaker 2: downtown go bankrupt. There's no way it's not gonna. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I think it's just I'm saying I'm looking
Speaker 2: at this bail out as coming one hundred percent. There's
Speaker 2: no way that they'll let the billionaires go bankrupt on
Speaker 2: this or even the small regional banks everybody will come
Speaker 2: up with some you know, reason, et cetera. Why, but
Speaker 2: we're either a year out, maybe a year and a
Speaker 2: half out. Who knows, there's no way interest rates are
Speaker 2: going to zero again. It really looks from basically what
Speaker 2: I've read, where a lot of these loans don't even
Speaker 2: make sense over two percent, and then you know that's
Speaker 2: with vacancy, and considering where we are with that, it's
Speaker 2: a catastrophe. And the one of the reasons why everyone
Speaker 2: should care about this is that if small banks and
Speaker 2: regional banks and all that stuff get wiped out, that
Speaker 2: has a huge downstream effect. Not only does it consolidate
Speaker 2: even more so the Power and Chase, Manhattan Bank and
Speaker 2: all these other bank JP, Morgan Chase, all these other
Speaker 2: Bank of America, City Bank, all these other people. It
Speaker 2: dramatically restricts the ability for people to get loans for
Speaker 2: a normal, everyday life, like mortgages, the small business. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's so many different car loans whatever. You basically just
Speaker 2: have a one dealer and then their terms. You set
Speaker 2: the market and that's it. So what are you going
Speaker 2: to do if you need a house or something? You
Speaker 2: go to your small regional bank or whatever to get
Speaker 2: that those days maybe over these banks go under.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, this is the biggest risk
Speaker 1: of catastrophe that is hanging over our economy right now, because,
Speaker 1: I mean, the math just doesn't work out. And the
Speaker 1: reason that they've deemed this a quote doom loop is
Speaker 1: because of what you're pointing to Soccer. Effectively, if losses
Speaker 1: on those loans occur in massive amounts, then what are
Speaker 1: the banks going to do. They're going to cut their
Speaker 1: lending back because they, you know, are trying to cut
Speaker 1: back on their risk. Then that leads to further drops
Speaker 1: in property prices and even more losses, and on and
Speaker 1: on we go. That's the doom loop that there's describing here.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to see how any other future comes
Speaker 1: to pass given what we know about office vacancy, Given
Speaker 1: what we know about i mean, the extraordinary level of
Speaker 1: price decline for these properties, given the the interest rate
Speaker 1: and how much they have come up, and how that
Speaker 1: makes so many of these loans not work. It's hard
Speaker 1: for me to see how this one ends ends well,
Speaker 1: So this is one we're going to keep our eyes on.
Speaker 1: The Other thing that we've been really keeping our eyes
Speaker 1: on is housing, which I think is you know, actually stolen.
Speaker 1: When he was talking about like, why do people feel
Speaker 1: so bad about the Biden economy, He's like, I think
Speaker 1: it's housing, And I think there's a pretty good case to.
Speaker 3: Be made about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you can't, I mean that's like the basic
Speaker 1: basic building block of a stable life is like can
Speaker 1: I afford the rent? Can I ever conceive of buying
Speaker 1: a house? And increasingly, for more and more Americans, the
Speaker 1: answer is no. Apparently suburbs have been particularly hard hit
Speaker 1: in terms of rising rents. This is another Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal piece. They say that suburban rent growth exceeds its
Speaker 1: urban counterpart in twenty eight of thirty three metro areas,
Speaker 1: according to a new study. This is yet another post
Speaker 1: pandemic and pandemic era trend where during the pandemic, people
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of the city. They wanted more space,
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to move around and not
Speaker 1: be so confined, and they office workers were working from
Speaker 1: homes so they didn't have to worry about their commute,
Speaker 1: and so people fled a lot of these urban centers.
Speaker 1: And guess what, They've decided that they like where they
Speaker 1: are and they want to stay. So the suburbs have
Speaker 1: seen huge growth, and with that growth has come a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure on the rental market. So it's becoming
Speaker 1: super expensive to afford an apartment in a lot of
Speaker 1: suburbs across the country. What they say is that many
Speaker 1: white collar workers remote jobs move down to city apartments
Speaker 1: for roomy or accommodations during the early months. Now, high
Speaker 1: mortgage rates and home prices are keeping some of those
Speaker 1: families renting for longer periods. Rise in crime and homelessness
Speaker 1: in several big cities also has some renters looking to
Speaker 1: the suburbs. That trend is propping up rents and fueling
Speaker 1: concerns about rental affordability in suburban areas. Is leading some
Speaker 1: governments to pass new rent control measures in response. And actually,
Speaker 1: if you look across the country, some of the biggest
Speaker 1: activist energy is actually around tenant protections and rent controls
Speaker 1: and trying to deal with this crisis of affordability. Huge
Speaker 1: energy around this across the country. And they point to
Speaker 1: Montgomery County, Maryland, and Peg County Prince George's County, Maryland.
Speaker 1: Both of them are Washington DC suburbs that have taken
Speaker 1: some real steps in response to this affordability crisis. But
Speaker 1: this is, you know, this is a massive issue for
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are just trying to have
Speaker 1: a little bit more room and have been priced out
Speaker 1: of the housing market, but are now starting to be
Speaker 1: priced out of the rental market as well.
Speaker 2: Rust of are the rental market? What are people supposed
Speaker 2: to do? And you know, I'm somewhat sympathetic too. Some
Speaker 2: of these people they want to buy, they want to
Speaker 2: buy a house in suburbs. Guess what now with an
Speaker 2: eight percent interest rate, that ain't going to happen. So
Speaker 2: what are they supposed to do?
Speaker 3: You got a rent? Well, if you got a rent,
Speaker 3: then you're pushing somebody else out of that house. So
Speaker 3: they would have done.
Speaker 2: Now they're in a multi family home and they're now
Speaker 2: somebody else is homeless or even somewhere an hour away
Speaker 2: and has a terrible commute.
Speaker 3: So it's a bad system all the way around. I
Speaker 3: think housing is number one looking at this too.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just don't know how you fix it
Speaker 2: because when you got massive construction loan rates and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, it's not like people going to be building
Speaker 2: new things. Developers are Actually there is a big boom
Speaker 2: right now, luckily in terms of what people are developing,
Speaker 2: but the overall price to justify your build it's going
Speaker 2: to be high.
Speaker 3: Yeah who can afford that? Well, probably not you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the issue is there is actually a lot
Speaker 1: of development that is happening right now, but it's high
Speaker 1: end because that's where the money is. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like a problem that just like letting the free
Speaker 1: market do its thing is going to solve. You're going
Speaker 1: in order to build out the number of units you
Speaker 1: would need in order to make housing anything approaching affordable
Speaker 1: at this point, it's going to take some direct government involvement.
Speaker 1: You know, probably these cities and localities are doing everything
Speaker 1: they can, but they don't have the level of funds
Speaker 1: that at the state level, let alone the federal level.
Speaker 1: So you're really going to need this. Something that was
Speaker 1: proposed in the Build Back Better Bill originally was a
Speaker 1: lot of money to fund and incentivize construction of these affordable,
Speaker 1: you know, more affordable units. Montgomery County has been pretty
Speaker 1: innovative in some of their like public private partnerships and
Speaker 1: mixed income apartment building living. There's some interesting like pilot
Speaker 1: projects that are happening here close to DC, but of
Speaker 1: course it's nowhere near the scale that would be needed
Speaker 1: to deal with this problem.
Speaker 2: This is a multi trillion dollar issue. It would require
Speaker 2: the actual attention of the president, and just like everything
Speaker 2: else in our politics, no one is going to pay
Speaker 2: attention to those guys until it breaks completely.
Speaker 3: That's what I was talking about, bailout.
Speaker 2: That we will resolve this problem when there's a bailout,
Speaker 2: when there's an actual complete bottom falls, even though everyone
Speaker 2: can see that it's coming. I would bet you if
Speaker 2: you ask, you know, ten people in the White House,
Speaker 2: maybe one guy, that junior guy has someone on his radar.
Speaker 3: The President probably has no idea. Yeah, it's gone, and
Speaker 3: that's our system that we don't do anything until.
Speaker 1: Well that is so true. And if when there is
Speaker 1: a single bank that fails, then DC will pay attention.
Speaker 1: But when you have you know, people get kicked out
Speaker 1: on the street and can't afford the rent and they're
Speaker 1: just completely screwed. Well that's not we can deal with that,
Speaker 1: you know, a decade from now. But the minute that
Speaker 1: it's a bank and their investors and whatever that are
Speaker 1: in trouble, then they'll op.
Speaker 2: To Yeah, wait, till the billionaires actually start to suffer,
Speaker 2: and then maybe we'll start to pay a defension. All right,
Speaker 2: let's talk about college. There's some really interesting stuff going
Speaker 2: on in the college space. People know I care a
Speaker 2: lot about this issue. I wanted to give a big
Speaker 2: shout out this big show for the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: Journal came out with a new ranking system which we
Speaker 2: really I really commend because it's really important for people
Speaker 2: who are trying to evaluate if college is worth it,
Speaker 2: whether it's worth it, and what college to go to
Speaker 2: to answer a couple of basic questions. What we all
Speaker 2: know already is about student debt, and of course student
Speaker 2: debt and intuition is astronomical. So the way that people
Speaker 2: even justified debt is a single question, can I actually
Speaker 2: make enough money in order to pay this off and
Speaker 2: in a reasonable timeframe and also make decent living and
Speaker 2: better prospects.
Speaker 3: Than if I hadn't gone to college at all.
Speaker 2: For many majors, for many universities, there have been on
Speaker 2: the wrong side of that trade millions and millions of people,
Speaker 2: But for some places it is worth it. So how
Speaker 2: do you identify one of the biggest problems with student
Speaker 2: debt in particular the borrowers for are the most screwed
Speaker 2: are the people who take out loans from college, don't
Speaker 2: graduate on time or don't graduate at all, and who
Speaker 2: have a huge amount of student debt and don't get
Speaker 2: the wage premium. So what the journal data is. They
Speaker 2: created this new ranking system. Let's put it up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. Where the vast majority of the weight
Speaker 2: in this ranking system is will this university push you
Speaker 2: to graduate on time, actually have an on time graduation rate?
Speaker 2: And number two, will it have a good wage premium
Speaker 2: over the average high school earner wage. What they came
Speaker 2: up with is a good list of which they say
Speaker 2: Princeton University, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: are in the top seven. But from there that's where
Speaker 2: actually things start to get interesting. Amherst College, Claremont, McKenna, Babson, Swarthmore,
Speaker 2: Georgetown University, Vanderbilt, Bandy, Lehigh University, University of Florida, Duke University,
Speaker 2: Rose Homan Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology,
Speaker 2: the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Brigham Young University. What
Speaker 2: they point to in their college ranking systems, Crystal is
Speaker 2: that they are able to show that these universities and
Speaker 2: of course look Ivy League and all that the wage premium.
Speaker 3: We've all known about that. So it's not a surprise
Speaker 3: for the top ten.
Speaker 2: But to see somebody like Babson at number ten, okay,
Speaker 2: why so I did a little bit of digging. Babson
Speaker 2: is one of those colleges where they require freshman courses
Speaker 2: on business. They actually place you inside of real businesses
Speaker 2: from a very early on age.
Speaker 3: They make you a really good manager.
Speaker 2: It's like a targeted college, and the people who go there,
Speaker 2: they're pitch to you is like, we not only are
Speaker 2: going to get you a job, you're going to learn
Speaker 2: how to run a business from a very very young age.
Speaker 2: And you know now that you and I do this,
Speaker 2: it's hard. It's a real skill set to be able
Speaker 2: to get that when you're twenty invaluable. So people like
Speaker 2: Claremont McKenna as well even Amherst, some of these smaller
Speaker 2: liberal arts colleges. It's not just engineering that's coming out
Speaker 2: from the it's targeted, actual working with people to develop
Speaker 2: their interest early on, line them up with a genuine skill,
Speaker 2: and then put them into the robust alumni network to
Speaker 2: get them into a decent, high paying job. And really
Speaker 2: what came through, I think in terms of the colleges
Speaker 2: was that if you know things do align for you, you
Speaker 2: could make some pretty good money whenever you graduate from
Speaker 2: one of these institutions. So just to give everybody an idea,
Speaker 2: they have the wage premium here Princeton University, their average
Speaker 2: graduate for their average graduate is making eighty three thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: almost more than the average high school graduate yearly salary
Speaker 2: whenever they graduate.
Speaker 3: That's got a lot of money. It's over one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. Mit.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know technology field, but as I mentioned
Speaker 2: about Amherst, I mean they're making fifty one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: over the average earner. Babson is making eighty two almost
Speaker 2: thousand dollars more. So, So what are we learning from
Speaker 2: this is that actual it's about skill, and it's about
Speaker 2: realigning that skill with your graduation on time rate, racking
Speaker 2: it up and putting against debt, and thinking about your
Speaker 2: longtime actual premium. When you put those three things together,
Speaker 2: that's where college is worth it.
Speaker 3: I've always said this, I think way too many people
Speaker 3: go to college.
Speaker 2: Many people go to and study things that just don't
Speaker 2: make any real economic sense, and so this is a
Speaker 2: great way of actually putting it together where the stars
Speaker 2: really aligned for graduates, where it's way more so worth
Speaker 2: it than if you were just going to go to
Speaker 2: a trade school in the first place.
Speaker 3: I'm a huge fan of trade schools.
Speaker 2: I think we should vastly fund more so whenever I
Speaker 2: posted this, actually a lot of people who work in
Speaker 2: the trades were like, I make more money than that
Speaker 2: picking up garbage, and I was like, great, I'm happy
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: Actually, so people should have that available to them.
Speaker 2: But for those who are considering it, this is a
Speaker 2: great way to actually look into evaluate college. And I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people are kind of waking up
Speaker 2: to what I was describing the just the generic idea
Speaker 2: of like the tick in the box, like I'm going
Speaker 2: to take out one hundred in debt and go to college.
Speaker 3: We shouldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: I think this information is just very useful, super you know.
Speaker 1: And I was initially a little uncomfortable, frankly, because first
Speaker 1: of all, I think, you know, people are more than
Speaker 1: just what their earning capacity is. And I also think
Speaker 1: that there are the whole point of an education isn't
Speaker 1: just to be able to cash in on that educational right.
Speaker 1: But they, you know, they acknowledge that. I mean, they
Speaker 1: say that the scores are based on three factors. Student
Speaker 1: outcomes account for seventy percent of the reakings. That's what
Speaker 1: Soccer's been talking about, basically, like how much does it cost?
Speaker 1: And how much are you likely to earn? The learning
Speaker 1: environment is twenty percent and diversity is ten percent. And
Speaker 1: they broke down for people who are evaluating college based
Speaker 1: on other criteria than just like Okay, what am I
Speaker 1: likely to earn if I go to the school and
Speaker 1: how much is it going to cost me? They have
Speaker 1: other lists that focus on social mobility ranking. You know,
Speaker 1: how does this cut this? That's something we looked at
Speaker 1: before the city cost New York, That's right. Which colleges
Speaker 1: do the best at elevating like working class people into
Speaker 1: the upper middle class, Like if you want to you know,
Speaker 1: if you want upper mobility, what's the best college to
Speaker 1: go to? They have a student experience ranking just for
Speaker 1: if you're looking, you know, for that real college life experience.
Speaker 1: You can look at that as well well. And so
Speaker 1: I did feel like they took a sort of wholesome
Speaker 1: view of this. I think there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons why people go to college increasingly, and I
Speaker 1: actually think that this is sad. People view a liberal
Speaker 1: arts education as basically a luxury for students, for students
Speaker 1: who are wealth whose families are wealthy enough that they
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about what salary they're going to
Speaker 1: earn when they come out of college. And I do
Speaker 1: think the reason I say that I think that's sad
Speaker 1: is because I do think that there is value to
Speaker 1: education and learning about you know, history and great works
Speaker 1: of art and literature beyond just can I convert that
Speaker 1: into a salary. But given how much pressure there is
Speaker 1: on you know, millennials and now on gen z just
Speaker 1: to be able to survive, or just talking about the
Speaker 1: cost of housing, I think, you know, increasingly, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the primary focus of students going into colleges, like
Speaker 1: is this going to be worth it? What am I
Speaker 1: going to get out of this experience? How quickly can
Speaker 1: I get through college so that I can get into
Speaker 1: actual earning and convert this investment I'm making into myself
Speaker 1: into actual dollars in an ability to live I think that's,
Speaker 1: you know, the reality that people are living in now,
Speaker 1: and it's great to have some information that helps people
Speaker 1: to sort those things through because it is very complex
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult to do this kind of evaluation
Speaker 1: on your own.
Speaker 2: It's important, it's nearly impossible, actually, because a lot of
Speaker 2: this data is actually very difficult to find, and it
Speaker 2: also fits very neatly with there's a reason why gen
Speaker 2: Z and create it increasingly does not look at college
Speaker 2: as a good trade.
Speaker 3: So we have that we can put this up.
Speaker 2: There on the screen where they go into a little
Speaker 2: bit of the detail about how people feel about this.
Speaker 2: And one of the reason why is that college tuition
Speaker 2: from twenty ten to twenty twenty two has risen an
Speaker 2: average quote of twelve percent per year, while overall inflation
Speaker 2: only increased on average two point six per percent per year. Today,
Speaker 2: it costs one hundred and four thousand dollars on average
Speaker 2: to attend a four year public university and two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty three thousand dollars for a private University's completely
Speaker 2: unhinged and insane, especially if you are borrowing all of
Speaker 2: that up to the hill and then lo and behold
Speaker 2: let's go to the next one here, guys, please quote
Speaker 2: the widening gap between the value and the cost of
Speaker 2: college has shifted gen Z's attitude towards higher education. At
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, survey by Morning Consult found that forty
Speaker 2: one percent of gen Zer said that they tend to
Speaker 2: trust US colleges and universities, at the lowest percentage of
Speaker 2: any generation.
Speaker 3: I'm really glad to see that. It's very important.
Speaker 2: As I said, you can make if you're just looking
Speaker 2: for work life balance. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things that you can find in the trades or not
Speaker 2: having to go on to a college education.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean you need some education. You still do.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of different certifications, all the things
Speaker 2: that you can go about. I know that there are
Speaker 2: a lot of plumbers and all the people living very
Speaker 2: meaningful in great lives. And the reason why is because
Speaker 2: they get to sert their own work schedules. Some those
Speaker 2: get to own their own business. There's a huge amount
Speaker 2: of upside potential too if you're able to only master
Speaker 2: the trade, but also master the business side of this.
Speaker 2: The point though, is that people are starting to wake
Speaker 2: up to that. Whereas I think our generation, Crystal, the
Speaker 2: millennial generation very much was like the liberal arts. Education
Speaker 2: is not only an attainable goal, it's a noble goal.
Speaker 2: And while I don't think that that's wrong, I do
Speaker 2: think it is Ultimately, I do believe it is a
Speaker 2: luxury good.
Speaker 1: Pushing everyone to college is really it was really a
Speaker 1: neoliberal era thing where it's like, we're going to take
Speaker 1: the responsibility away from the government and push it onto you.
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, the costs are going to
Speaker 1: be pushed onto you, and you know, you are responsible
Speaker 1: for making sure you're able to make it in the
Speaker 1: workplace and earn a decent salary. And if you are
Speaker 1: a good girl or boy and you follow this program
Speaker 1: and you go to college, then you're going to be
Speaker 1: set up for a solid middle class life. For many people,
Speaker 1: that ended up being a lie. I mean, especially for
Speaker 1: people who graduated out into the Great Recession. But even
Speaker 1: you know, people who are graduating out into this economy
Speaker 1: are finding the same thing, and especially in terms of
Speaker 1: those basic building blocks of the middle class life. So
Speaker 1: they took on all the debt, they did the thing
Speaker 1: that you know, they were told they were supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and then they still find themselves screwed. So not surprising
Speaker 1: that gen Z is taking a different approach or has
Speaker 1: a different view of what the college experience should be,
Speaker 1: or whether or not they even think that that is
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 2: Yes, and my last thing I'll say about this is
Speaker 2: stop prestige hunting. One of the most important takeaways from
Speaker 2: this thing was that places like Brown University it ranked
Speaker 2: number sixty six, even though it's.
Speaker 3: In the IVY. Really yeah, because you don't make any money.
Speaker 2: It's the classic example if I took out a ton
Speaker 2: of debt, studied a major which didn't actually wasn't all
Speaker 2: that useful, and then.
Speaker 3: Wasn't really able to get a job where it paid out.
Speaker 2: Johns Hopkins was number ninety nine, which is pathetic that
Speaker 2: compared to prizes mat it's not. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 2: if you've just did engineering or bio degrees or whatever,
Speaker 2: I think would be different, But that's not where a
Speaker 2: lot of their money comes from for their students. So
Speaker 2: read and listen carefully, and you know, also take advantage
Speaker 2: of opportunities if you have them. I'm looking at this,
Speaker 2: you know, University of Florida. If you live in Florida,
Speaker 2: you don't need to pay a ton of money to
Speaker 2: go somewhere else. You can have a great school experience,
Speaker 2: you can have football, and you can get a decent
Speaker 2: job places like BAPS in Claremont McKenna. Do you know
Speaker 2: any of these other places where it's a little bit
Speaker 2: more accessible, just you know, check it out. Not everything
Speaker 2: is just a prestige hunt. And you don't have to
Speaker 2: check a box for your parents or your grandparents or
Speaker 2: any of those things. This is mostly my monologue to
Speaker 2: the Indian parents.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I need to get Chris
Speaker 1: Matthews in here to talk to you about your tiger moment.
Speaker 3: Yes, the thing is I did not even have a
Speaker 3: tiger moment.
Speaker 2: Its a funny thing, but I mean I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people who did, and you know, without fail
Speaker 2: and actually religion.
Speaker 1: The funniest moments there.
Speaker 3: He said, you know what that's like. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, I guess around other Indian people.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 3: Anyway, all right, let's get to the last part here.
Speaker 2: Mike Pence in a fascinating this is this is one
Speaker 2: of those moments which we could go back and study
Speaker 2: that actually thinks is a very important speech, not for
Speaker 2: the reasons that he thinks it is where he wants
Speaker 2: to reclaim the mantle of conservatism, but for the last
Speaker 2: vestiges of what the establishment view will look like. Fighting
Speaker 2: against the tides of populous uprisings left and right. They
Speaker 2: are manifesting themselves in all sorts of ways, and Pence
Speaker 2: just being there, the very last guy trying to cling
Speaker 2: you know, at the end and pull everyone back, gives
Speaker 2: this big speed. It was in New Hampshire against populism
Speaker 2: and it's important the speech because it's not just about
Speaker 2: Trump populism, although that is the main target. It's about
Speaker 2: populism left and right and why it is not the answer,
Speaker 2: why limited government reagunite conservatism is the real answer is
Speaker 2: what the Republican Party should try and reclaim.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 5: Will we be the party of conservatism or will we
Speaker 5: follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles.
Speaker 5: The future of this movement in this party belongs to
Speaker 5: one or the other. But today another strain of this
Speaker 5: ideology challenges Conservatism, not from the Democratic Party but from
Speaker 5: within for control of the Republican Party. It takes the
Speaker 5: form of what's known as populism rather than progressivism. But
Speaker 5: make no mistake about it. Theologies are fellow travelers that
Speaker 5: the Republican populace would abandon American leadership on the world stage,
Speaker 5: embracing a posture of appeasement in the face of rising
Speaker 5: threats to freedom. Republican populace would blatantly erode our constitutional norms.
Speaker 5: A leading candidate for the Republican nomination last year called
Speaker 5: for the quote termination of all rules, regulations, and articles,
Speaker 5: even those found in the Constitution, and even after a
Speaker 5: historic victory for life, Republican populace would relegate the cause
Speaker 5: of protecting the unborn to the states, much in the
Speaker 5: way during another time in the life of our nation,
Speaker 5: those who sought to preserve a great evil tried to
Speaker 5: leave that question to the states alone. We've come to
Speaker 5: a Republican time for choosing. Will we embrace the traditional
Speaker 5: conservative agenda that's led our party and our nation to
Speaker 5: victory and prosperity now for more than a half a century,
Speaker 5: or will we choose to go down the path of
Speaker 5: populism and decline.
Speaker 3: Oh man, there's so much to go and to say there.
Speaker 2: I mean, first, I'm pretty sure he just compared saying
Speaker 2: that you should leave abortion to the states to slavery.
Speaker 3: So that's number one.
Speaker 2: But two really is it's very clear that he believes
Speaker 2: that the administration of the president that he served was
Speaker 2: not only wrong just on January sixth, but was wrong
Speaker 2: entirely from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: And that is where I just can't get over this
Speaker 3: crystal content.
Speaker 2: Aside how he was craven enough to take the VP
Speaker 2: job whenever he had a chance of being the freaking president,
Speaker 2: he was craven enough to stand behind Donald Trump when
Speaker 2: Donald Trump gave American carnage, one of the most popular
Speaker 2: speeches delivered by an American president in an inauguration in
Speaker 2: all of US history, he.
Speaker 3: Didn't say anything.
Speaker 2: Then served him loyally all that, But now whenever he's
Speaker 2: running his own campaign, it's like the four years that
Speaker 2: he existed in the White House, none of it happened
Speaker 2: war that he was a part of or sat next
Speaker 2: to Trump during.
Speaker 3: Apparently that was stupid.
Speaker 2: You know, any of the rhetoric or anything that Trump
Speaker 2: ran on twenty sixteen, he allegedly, I guess, just doesn't
Speaker 2: agree with any of that now, which makes me really
Speaker 2: question all of this toun and be like, why should
Speaker 2: I believe a word that you say whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to this, especially.
Speaker 1: When twenty sixteen Trump actually had a lot more truly
Speaker 1: populist elements to it, oh yeah, than current version of
Speaker 1: Trump totally. And and you know, we've seen the limits
Speaker 1: of the populism of Trump in terms of how he
Speaker 1: actually governed. The fact that the biggest domestic policy initiative
Speaker 1: they passed was a tax cut for the rich, something
Speaker 1: that I'm sure Mike Pence loved and felt very comfortable with.
Speaker 1: So it actually some pieces of it. It makes sense
Speaker 1: to me why Mike Pence stood by him during his
Speaker 1: time in office, because much of the agenda was basically
Speaker 1: like Reaganite, Paul Ryan engineered, Heritage Foundation, etc. But I
Speaker 1: also want to give some do to the main place
Speaker 1: where Trump actually departed from the prior Republican in Washington
Speaker 1: consensus was on trade and was on China. There genuinely
Speaker 1: was a shift there. It's now been embraced by Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: who actually has gone further in certain regards than Trump
Speaker 1: even went, especially with the industrial policy regarding semiconductors and
Speaker 1: some of the additional tariffs that he has levied in
Speaker 1: approach that he's taken to trade with China, and so
Speaker 1: it's formed the basis of kind of a new different
Speaker 1: consensus on trade, which I find to be really That's
Speaker 1: one of the few things I can say I feel
Speaker 1: actually encouraged about a new Washingt consensus form. And so
Speaker 1: Mike Pence's speech here, which in a way I respect
Speaker 1: because I think he really believes what he's saying, more
Speaker 1: so than when he was defending parts of the Trump
Speaker 1: agenda that he didn't necessarily agree with. But his speech
Speaker 1: is basically, like anything that was good about the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure we go back to the
Speaker 1: ways that were worse, like anything that he actually got right,
Speaker 1: which in my opinion was a few things, but you
Speaker 1: know they were far like few and far between, but
Speaker 1: the were a few things. He's like those things I
Speaker 1: want to go in the other direction on and you know,
Speaker 1: it's you can see the writing on the wall, like
Speaker 1: it's a losing cause at this point. You can see
Speaker 1: the level of support that he's getting. You can see
Speaker 1: the level of support that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: ideological brothers and sisters in the Republican primary field. You
Speaker 1: can see the level of support that they're getting a
Speaker 1: lot of donor interest, but not a lot of base
Speaker 1: popular support at this point. So, like I said, I mean,
Speaker 1: in a way, I sort of respect it because I
Speaker 1: think it's true to who he is at this point.
Speaker 1: But it's also awkward given that you took the job
Speaker 1: as Trump's VP. Trump helped to usher in this different
Speaker 1: vibe within the Republican Party and mostly at this point
Speaker 1: is vibes versus policy, but different vibe in the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: You didn't say anything until now, and until you know,
Speaker 1: his supporters were running around the Capitol like wanting to
Speaker 1: hang you. So it makes it complicated for him to
Speaker 1: both try to run on the Trump Pence agenda, which
Speaker 1: he does, yes, which he does all, but also assert
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm a return to this other thing
Speaker 1: and I'm actually really different from him. He's trying to
Speaker 1: have it both ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, I am heartened to see that people
Speaker 2: don't appreciate this, that they are not signing on to it.
Speaker 2: But there's strains of it everywhere. Don't forget Tim Scott,
Speaker 2: Nikki Haley. These are all cut from the exact same cloth.
Speaker 2: They really believe in this anti populist sentiment. And look,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, it's like where you
Speaker 2: fall on that question, to me is like the ultimate
Speaker 2: decider for it's like do I even marginally respect you
Speaker 2: as a politician or not, at least in rhetoric, because
Speaker 2: he is rejecting the frame at all. He's not even
Speaker 2: trying to co opt or to embrace it. He's like, no,
Speaker 2: this is explicitly a bad thing and it is anti democratic.
Speaker 2: It is also you know, a shadow really of what
Speaker 2: the party was, and I'm really glad to see that
Speaker 2: at at the very least, is not there anymore. So
Speaker 2: the thing is is that it has to be moved
Speaker 2: on from. And that's still why I think that the
Speaker 2: speech was so important. It was important for people to
Speaker 2: see that this is still a real force. It is believed,
Speaker 2: you know, huge For most people, what they do is
Speaker 2: they try and co opt it, to try and you know,
Speaker 2: push what Pence is selling.
Speaker 3: He's just the only one really outwardly being.
Speaker 2: Like, no, populism itself is bad and you know, accepting
Speaker 2: the quote unquote limited government framework, but don't you know,
Speaker 2: don't don't forget there. He's like, I'm limited government, except
Speaker 2: we need to pass up in a national abortion ban.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, it's so it doesn't quite
Speaker 2: square there exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: Just it was an important speech for everyone, even though
Speaker 2: it didn't receive as much media attention, I think as
Speaker 2: it should, because it shows you, like what they really
Speaker 2: think of you, and regardless of whether you're Republican or not.
Speaker 2: Like that, that was the most distane I've seen yet
Speaker 2: for real like voters and for Democrats. For democracy.
Speaker 1: There's a huge gulf between what the Republican base actually thinks,
Speaker 1: especially on economics, It's huge, and what the entire even
Speaker 1: the supposed populist in Washington support here. And that's not
Speaker 1: an accident. I mean, that's still where the financial base is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When we talked to Sora Amari about this, he pointed
Speaker 1: out that the not even the like big billionaire donors,
Speaker 1: although that's part of it, but that next level down,
Speaker 1: the car dealership owners, like the local you know, campaign
Speaker 1: donations and the people who in the individual congressional districts
Speaker 1: fund the party and are the biggest activists, really act
Speaker 1: as a check on any sort of more populous movement
Speaker 1: in terms of economics, and so it's not a surprise
Speaker 1: that you see candidates like Ronda Santis and Vivike Ramaswami
Speaker 1: who hold very you know. I mean, you can look
Speaker 1: at Ronda Santis record when he was like a Tea
Speaker 1: party limited government Mike Pencish kind of a guy when
Speaker 1: he was here in Washington, and Vivike Ramaswami who has
Speaker 1: these very like pretty radical libertarian beliefs and very you know,
Speaker 1: libertarian approach to limited government as well. They use the
Speaker 1: language of populism because they see that it sells, but
Speaker 1: they don't and but they don't actually follow it up
Speaker 1: with the policy that the Republican base would support more
Speaker 1: so than the elites here in Washington. So that's part
Speaker 1: of why I say I actually respect Mike Pence being like, no,
Speaker 1: I just say I don't like that. This is who
Speaker 1: I am, like at least that's honest versus trying to
Speaker 1: do this bait and switch thing. But I also think
Speaker 1: that the interest and somewhat success of DeSantis and Ramaswami
Speaker 1: shows how much of our politics really does just come
Speaker 1: down to like vibes and attitude and the way you
Speaker 1: feel about someone.
Speaker 3: Sure enough, Crystal, what are you taking a look at well.
Speaker 1: A new poll from the Wall Street Journal underscores how
Speaker 1: even the mainstream press can no longer deny that Biden's
Speaker 1: age is a significant and legitimate issue for voters. Three
Speaker 1: quarters of American voters believe he is too old, and
Speaker 1: that includes a large majority of Democrats. And as we
Speaker 1: discussed on Tuesday, according to life expectancy charts for white men,
Speaker 1: there is quite a significant chance that he could actually
Speaker 1: die in office. As I said, that's worth considering. But
Speaker 1: the truth is, Biden's age isn't act actually his biggest
Speaker 1: liability now, as always, it's the economy stupid. It's the
Speaker 1: future promise of Bidenomics versus a current reality of struggle,
Speaker 1: and if he loses to Trump, it will have more
Speaker 1: to do with the proverbial kitchen table than with the
Speaker 1: actuarial tables. So let's dig into the actual Biden economic record,
Speaker 1: the failures, the wins, and why Americans are not feeling
Speaker 1: the Bidenomics love the TLDR. Is this the economic story
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration is experienced by regular people, has
Speaker 1: been price bikes coupled with a stripping away of all
Speaker 1: the pandemic programs. Which actually did help them survive. This
Speaker 1: chart here from the Lever shows all of the pandemic
Speaker 1: social safety net and how peace by piece it was
Speaker 1: allowed to expire, massively shrinking the social safety net for
Speaker 1: ordinary Americans. Now, for many people, these programs instituted by
Speaker 1: both Trump and Biden actually really improve their financial situation.
Speaker 1: During the COVID crisis, take a look at this chart
Speaker 1: of credit card debt. Pandemic programs led to a historic
Speaker 1: reduction in personal debt during twenty twenty and twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: But as those programs have been stripped away and inflation
Speaker 1: started to bite and the Fed hyped interest rates, Americans
Speaker 1: were quickly forced to rack back up new record levels
Speaker 1: of credit card debt, which has now surpassed pre pandemic levels. Now,
Speaker 1: the original idea of the Biden administration was to permanently
Speaker 1: expand the social safety net to bring it more in
Speaker 1: line with its other developed world peers. That was the
Speaker 1: basic concept of build back. Better to couple long term
Speaker 1: investments in a green transition industrial policy with tangible immediate
Speaker 1: benefits for Americans, things like affordable childcare, permanent child tax credit,
Speaker 1: huge investments in affordable housing, and a large expansion of healthcare,
Speaker 1: but this effort collapsed as Washington bought wholesale into what
Speaker 1: we now know was an incorrect analysis by permanently wrong
Speaker 1: economists of the causes of inflation in the face of
Speaker 1: massive supply chain disruptions and what is by now a
Speaker 1: widely accepted phenomenon of corporate price gouging. These economists pointed
Speaker 1: to the little bit of money in regular Americans bank
Speaker 1: accounts as the sole driver of inflation, and basically Biden
Speaker 1: the Democrats bought it, running like scared children away from
Speaker 1: the part of their agenda that actually would have helped
Speaker 1: ordinary people in immediate, tangible ways. The collapse of Build
Speaker 1: back beat Are roughly coincided with a messy Afghan withdrawal,
Speaker 1: which was one hundred percent the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: but led to uniform condemnation of the Biden administration across
Speaker 1: media outlets. With this one to two punch, Biden's once
Speaker 1: impressive approval ratings collapsed and never recovered, as you can
Speaker 1: see on that chart. So that's the short term economic
Speaker 1: reality which has led Biden to be rated so poorly overall,
Speaker 1: and specifically poorly on his stewardship of the economy, and
Speaker 1: it stands in start contrast to a medium to long
Speaker 1: term economic vision, which I have to say is actually
Speaker 1: the best of any president of my lifetime. Now, you
Speaker 1: might say that's a low bar.
Speaker 3: True.
Speaker 1: You might say there is way more than needs to
Speaker 1: be done. Also true, But the long term Bidenomics vision
Speaker 1: represents an important and notable shift away from the market
Speaker 1: obsessed tenants of forty years of neoliberalism, which have decimated
Speaker 1: our industrial capacity along with our once storied middle class.
Speaker 1: To put it simply, Biden and his team have rejected
Speaker 1: the Reagan, Clinton, Bush Obama consensus on free trade and
Speaker 1: have returned to a direct industrial policy that harkens back
Speaker 1: to the New Deal era or even to the Hamiltonian
Speaker 1: system which helped to build our nation in the first place.
Speaker 1: The Infrastructure Act is helping to build critical infrastructure which
Speaker 1: was desperately needed long neglected. That Chips Act prioritizes domestic
Speaker 1: industrial development of semiconductor's absolutely essential industry. The very poorly
Speaker 1: named Inflation Reduction Act is the most ambitious piece of
Speaker 1: Biden industrial policy, which seeks to get America wholeheartedly into
Speaker 1: the game of green tech investment, an industry which will
Speaker 1: define the future in an area where China has long
Speaker 1: been destroying us through their own large investments and industrial policy.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the Biden administration has also broken
Speaker 1: with forty years of consensus on corporate power and monopolies,
Speaker 1: bringing in a group of true renegades to restore trust
Speaker 1: busting and make it relevant again. In the modern era.
Speaker 1: There is hardly an industry where a small group of
Speaker 1: giant corporations haven't taken over with devastating consequences for small businesses, workers, farmers,
Speaker 1: and consumers, to name a few groups. So this work
Speaker 1: is really essential. And while of course I want them
Speaker 1: to go further and vehemently oppose the Biden endmen's intervention
Speaker 1: in the rail workers potential strike, this is the first
Speaker 1: administration in my life that has taken significant steps to
Speaker 1: strengthen union power. The Biden National Labor Relationsport has been
Speaker 1: a game changer for workers trying to organize, from decisions
Speaker 1: in favor of Starbucks workers to the recent earthquake ruling
Speaker 1: that will force union busters to immediately recognize embargain with
Speaker 1: workers real estate. Steps have been taken that could lead
Speaker 1: to a resurgence of labor, which to me is the
Speaker 1: single most important thing you could do to improve the
Speaker 1: lot of American workers. To underscale score just how important
Speaker 1: this really is. Just take a look at this chart.
Speaker 1: Killing unions killed the middle class. It is really that simple. Now.
Speaker 1: As I've said before, the Biden NLRB alone is reason
Speaker 1: to choose Biden over Trump if your priority is the
Speaker 1: fate of the American working class. But none of that
Speaker 1: positive possible future for Bidenomics is helping people today right now,
Speaker 1: nor will it be helping them when they go to
Speaker 1: cast their ballots a year from now. The Biden team
Speaker 1: screwed themselves by abandoning an immediate agenda of material progress
Speaker 1: for debt laden Americans. That's the real problem for him,
Speaker 1: after all. Biden's been old this whole time. He was
Speaker 1: old when he won the Democratic primary, he was old
Speaker 1: when he beat Trump. He was old at the beginning
Speaker 1: of his term when his approval rating was soaring, and
Speaker 1: he's still faring better in the polls than his much
Speaker 1: younger Vice president Gamala Harris. What has changed isn't Biden
Speaker 1: being old. It's the credit card balances, the dwindling bank accounts,
Speaker 1: an increasingly hopeless housing situation that has turned what should
Speaker 1: be a gimme reelect into grave, peril and saber. That's
Speaker 1: sort of my overall view of Biden.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, sorry, we looking at it.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the
Speaker 2: trade off that we have made with technology and privacy.
Speaker 2: And I was especially struck by this A few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: I was on a trip with some friends of mine.
Speaker 2: We were at an airbnb. This friend at a semi
Speaker 2: sensitive job, and they were sitting on the porch. They
Speaker 2: were talking about something from work, and I stopped him
Speaker 2: and I said, hey, don't forget most airbnbs they have
Speaker 2: ring cameras. You never know if the owner is watching.
Speaker 2: Sure enough, we looked around and in the corner there
Speaker 2: was a ring camera. Now would the owner care enough
Speaker 2: to really look an even eavesdrop? Who knows. But it's
Speaker 2: a reminder of something that just seems omnipresent these days.
Speaker 2: Anything with a battery or an Internet connection is dual use.
Speaker 2: It can make your life more convenient. It has plenty
Speaker 2: of legitimate use cases It's also an entry point for
Speaker 2: higher authorities to abuse if they want to. I kept
Speaker 2: thinking about this in the light of a new story
Speaker 2: that is rocking the gun world right now. Liberty Safe,
Speaker 2: long known as one of the gold standards of firearm
Speaker 2: safs safes has priced accordingly, has been caught in a
Speaker 2: tremendous scandal that seems to fly in the face of
Speaker 2: everything that they supposedly stand for. Started a few days
Speaker 2: ago when the news broke that the FBI arrested an
Speaker 2: individual named Nathan Hughes for crimes related to January sixth.
Speaker 2: Hughes was arrested while out at a shopping center, which
Speaker 2: coincided in the search warrant raid on his home, including
Speaker 2: for the gun safe. Now in the Hodge Twins telling quote,
Speaker 2: the FEDS called the manufacturer of his Liberty gun safe
Speaker 2: and got the passcode to get into it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Immediately, flags went up all over the gun world. Hold
Speaker 2: on a second, what are you talking about? Is that
Speaker 2: even possible? Not only is it possible, it's true. Liberty
Speaker 2: confirmed the news in a statement yesterday, saying, quote, on
Speaker 2: August thirtieth, twenty twenty three, Liberty Safe was contacted by
Speaker 2: the FBI requesting the access code to a safe of
Speaker 2: an individual for whom they had a warrant to search
Speaker 2: their property. They continue, quote, our company protocol is to
Speaker 2: provide access codes to law enforcement if it warn't grants
Speaker 2: some access to a property.
Speaker 3: Parse that again, if the FEDS have a search.
Speaker 2: Warrant just for your property and there happens to be
Speaker 2: a gun safe on said property, the company is not
Speaker 2: required by law at all to turn that code over.
Speaker 2: Yet they hand over the key to the freaking safe.
Speaker 2: The safe again is sold as impenetrable, meant to hold
Speaker 2: constitutionally protected guns. What's especially galling though about liberty decision
Speaker 2: is they did not even fight this request, and who
Speaker 2: knows how many others in the past. Apple famously in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen told the FBI kick rocks when they were
Speaker 2: asked to unlock the San Bernardino's terrorist iPhone. Their correct
Speaker 2: rationale was, well, if we do it, or we show
Speaker 2: the FBI how to do it, they could do it
Speaker 2: for all their products, and thus it was vital to
Speaker 2: preserve customer privacy not provide the government a backdoor to
Speaker 2: any of their devices. And that's Apple, one of the
Speaker 2: most liberal companies in the United States. Here you've got
Speaker 2: a freaking gun safe company who is constantly posting about
Speaker 2: well regulated militias and everyday carries that apparently does whatever
Speaker 2: the FBI just asked them to do.
Speaker 3: Even though they absolutely.
Speaker 2: Could have fought any such requests and one in court
Speaker 2: as Apple did against the FBI. The reason I am
Speaker 2: doing this is not just talking about liberty guns or
Speaker 2: that situation, is because it connects back to what I
Speaker 2: started with. Electronic locks are convenient, and that's why people
Speaker 2: use them or buy them. It's all fun and games
Speaker 2: until the company can just give the FEDS a backdoor
Speaker 2: into your nearly ten thousand dollars GUS safe that you
Speaker 2: bought with a full expectation that only the owner can access.
Speaker 2: And to circle back to the beginning, Ring cameras are
Speaker 2: really easy to use and set up too. And there's
Speaker 2: a bit of a catch though that the people over
Speaker 2: wired a flag that I've been dying to talk about
Speaker 2: over here for a while. Since twenty twenty one, Amazon
Speaker 2: has signed a partnership with more than two thousand police
Speaker 2: and fire departments across the US, as well as broad.
Speaker 3: With the UK. It has now been revealed that Ring owners.
Speaker 2: Footage has on multiple occasions been turned over to law
Speaker 2: enforcement authorities without the explicit consent of the owner of
Speaker 2: the footage or of the camera. Furthermore, the owners of
Speaker 2: said cameras and footage did not even know that that
Speaker 2: data was turned over. Flipping on the head the idea
Speaker 2: of who owns these things in the first place. Ring
Speaker 2: at that time said quote it may hand over data
Speaker 2: without permission in emergency situations where there is imminent danger
Speaker 2: of death or serious harm to a person. If you're
Speaker 2: a cop, obviously, what do you say whenever you want
Speaker 2: some data. It's imminent, it's an emergent situation. The guys
Speaker 2: onna lose boom. You don't even need a warrant and
Speaker 2: camera footage is on its way. And look, in some
Speaker 2: cases it is volunteering. If officers want footage of Ring cameras,
Speaker 2: then in some cases Ring will ask you if you
Speaker 2: want to share it, and if you do.
Speaker 3: Go for it. That's your choice as a citizen.
Speaker 2: But involuntary is where I draw the line from dash
Speaker 2: cams to door cams, to gun safes to smart homelocks.
Speaker 2: We are creating society where it is easier than ever
Speaker 2: for the police and law enforcement to get access to
Speaker 2: the most private areas of your life without a warrant
Speaker 2: and only having to call up the company to get access.
Speaker 2: And the worst part, as I said, there's really only
Speaker 2: so much you can do about it. You can have
Speaker 2: a dumb home, sure, but you still have to go
Speaker 2: out in public. Every time you walk your dog, you're
Speaker 2: probably captured by more than a dozen doorbell cameras.
Speaker 3: If you live in a semi urban environment like I do, or.
Speaker 2: Visit an airbnb or drive is it captured on someone
Speaker 2: else's dash camp. Perhaps we don't have a legal expectation
Speaker 2: of privacy in each one of those situations, but we
Speaker 2: should have some moral one as a society, and we
Speaker 2: can push our lawmakers to actually do something about this. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: the pace of technology and government and try is only
Speaker 2: going to increase, and the main victims will be us
Speaker 2: who have to choose between convenient convenience and surveillance.
Speaker 3: I mean, the gun safe thing is actually nuts.
Speaker 1: And by the way, and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: my reaction to Sagres's monologue, become a premium subscriber today
Speaker 1: at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, apologies, we had a scheduling conflict with Anthony Fantana,
Speaker 2: but we're going to set it up well. We'll get
Speaker 2: the segment done as soon as he's available. We appreciate
Speaker 2: everybody for watching. As we said, we've got the focus
Speaker 2: group coming over the weekend, lots of travel.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a new Hampshire. We're really excited
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: If you can support us breakingpoints dot com, it really
Speaker 2: does help us out.
Speaker 3: Otherwise, we're going to see you all next week.