Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2: Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
Speaker 2: and we are so excited about what that means for
Speaker 2: the future of the show.
Speaker 1: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 1: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 1: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
Speaker 2: and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 1: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 1: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. Crystal. How was
Speaker 3: your Christmas? Ah?
Speaker 2: It was lovely, great time with family, all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: We went up to New York for a little bit
Speaker 2: and traffic wasn't terribly bad, so I count that as
Speaker 2: a real blessing.
Speaker 4: How about you, em.
Speaker 3: It was good, It was good. It was a white
Speaker 3: Christmas in Wisconsin, so that was Oh.
Speaker 2: Oh, are you a fan of the white Christmas situation?
Speaker 2: My youngest daughter is like obsessed with snow. She says
Speaker 2: she wants to live in the North Bowl in the North.
Speaker 3: I mean, you gotta have snow like it's it's really
Speaker 3: I find it very depressing when there's no snow on Christmas.
Speaker 3: But this is the world we live in now.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, indeed a lot to get to you in
Speaker 2: the show today. Also, because we've been off, there's like
Speaker 2: a backlog of stories for us to talk about. But
Speaker 2: we also have some breaking news, which is that Jimmy
Speaker 2: Carter has passed at the age of one hundred. So
Speaker 2: we'll take a little bit of a look at his
Speaker 2: I would say, sort of complicated legacy. A lot of
Speaker 2: people see it a lot of different ways. Trump jumped
Speaker 2: in and shows sides in this ongoing war between Elon
Speaker 2: Muskin and Bake Ramaswami versus MAGA types like Laura Lumer,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I'm very excited to hear what you have
Speaker 2: to say about this, Emily, So I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: to sitting back and hearing your thoughts on this whole
Speaker 2: skirmish that has unfolded.
Speaker 3: We'll also get a little bit of Sager's thoughts because
Speaker 3: this is one of Sager's hobby horses, so we'll be
Speaker 3: all over that too.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: In Indians We're catching a lot of stories in this.
Speaker 2: Oh boy strays is probably the nicest way you could
Speaker 2: put it. They were, you know, taking a lot of
Speaker 2: direct in this. So yeah, we'll include some of his
Speaker 2: thoughts in that block as well, Theoman weighing in on
Speaker 2: the potential coming TikTok ban as well as Trump weigh
Speaker 2: in on the potential TikTok ban. That part is probably
Speaker 2: a little more noworthy than theovon, but we'll give both
Speaker 2: of their thoughts on that. In terrible news, the last
Speaker 2: hospital in Gaza has now been destroyed. The head of
Speaker 2: that hospital has been detained. Reports are that he is
Speaker 2: being tortured, his family issuing a plea for him to
Speaker 2: be returned safely. So just continuing horror in the Gaza
Speaker 2: strip being committed by the IDF.
Speaker 4: We've got a new.
Speaker 2: Poll revealing how the country really feels about the murder
Speaker 2: of that healthcare CEO. And Joe Biden apparently thinks he
Speaker 2: would have beat Trump emily levels of delusion that I
Speaker 2: previously thought were not even possible.
Speaker 4: Are are disagreeing to the four? Yeah? Just amazing.
Speaker 3: You think, you shockingly think that Donald Trump's at least
Speaker 3: sentience would have defeated. We beat Medicare Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: It seems like he had a little bit of an
Speaker 2: edge going into that one, I will say, so any way,
Speaker 2: he's Biden is finally giving a couple interviews talking about
Speaker 2: some of his regrets. None of them are the thing
Speaker 2: I mean. Some of them are like, okay, little political
Speaker 2: things that he should have done differently, but none of
Speaker 2: them are like, hey, maybe I shouldn't have run for
Speaker 2: reelection as this old man who can barely put two
Speaker 2: sentences together. That party apparently feels no regrets over. So
Speaker 2: in any case, let's go ahead and jump into this
Speaker 2: significant news, which is that Jimmy Carter, former president of course,
Speaker 2: has passed away at the age of one hundred. It's
Speaker 2: been almost two years since Emily we received the news
Speaker 2: that he was entering hospice care and foregoing further sort
Speaker 2: of attempts to you know, extend his life, and he
Speaker 2: held on much longer than anyone expected. His passing leaves
Speaker 2: Joe Biden as the now oldest living president and Donald
Speaker 2: Trump as the oldest you know living second oldest living
Speaker 2: America and president. So kind of an incredible life, you know,
Speaker 2: born in rural Georgia obviously in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: but it was in such a remote part of the
Speaker 2: country that it was almost like, you know, the lifestyle
Speaker 2: was still very much eighteen hundreds. So the amount of
Speaker 2: change and progress and turmoil and all of that that
Speaker 2: he's seen in his lifetime is hard to truly wrap
Speaker 2: her head around. And you know, in some ways, it's
Speaker 2: sort of fitting that he passed at this moment because
Speaker 2: his presidency really was a transition between the New Deal
Speaker 2: era and the neoliberal era. A lot of people think
Speaker 2: of Ronald Reagan as the first truly neoliberal president, which
Speaker 2: I think is fair, But Jimmy Carter did a lot
Speaker 2: of neoliberal policies himself. He deregulated the airlines, he regulated
Speaker 2: the trucking industry, deregulated some of the energy industry. He's
Speaker 2: the person who installs Paul Volker at the FED. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of neoliberalism that he was starting to
Speaker 2: you're in and now here we are kind of at
Speaker 2: the end of that era. Now is think, especially with
Speaker 2: Trump retaking the White House, what exactly that's going to
Speaker 2: look like. We'll talk about more when we get into
Speaker 2: this fight between Elon maga, et cetera. But certainly here
Speaker 2: and around the world, that particular era is coming to
Speaker 2: a close, and so in some ways it's fitting that
Speaker 2: this is when Jimmy Carter makes his exit.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, that's an interesting point because right now preparations
Speaker 3: are underway obviously for the funeral, and so typically that
Speaker 3: brings together all of the living presidents and first ladies,
Speaker 3: and we've seen that handled a little bit differently during
Speaker 3: the Trump era. It always does provide some insights into,
Speaker 3: for example, just how well the Bush family gets along
Speaker 3: with the Obama family, and you sort of get to
Speaker 3: see some displays that I think are often unfortunate and
Speaker 3: displays that are in some ways, you know, give people
Speaker 3: like Whoopi Goldberg hope that the country is just going
Speaker 3: to keep on, keep it on, because.
Speaker 2: You get to see also how much Jill Biden apparently
Speaker 2: likes Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, oh, maybe he'll wear his cologne again, so
Speaker 3: I have to see. But all that is to say,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Carter, to your point, was born in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: He was born before nuclear weapons were invented, and became
Speaker 3: a president in the middle of the Cold War, and
Speaker 3: to this day our foreign policy, for example, think about
Speaker 3: Israel and Iran is informed by our conduct during the
Speaker 3: Cold War and the way that the world was dramatically
Speaker 3: shrunk because of nuclear weapons, which happened literally in his youth.
Speaker 3: So it's just an incredible is an incredible life.
Speaker 2: And Joe Biden was apparently the first Senator to endorse
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter in that Democratic primary all those many years ago,
Speaker 2: so something some of our political figures still definitely hanging
Speaker 2: in there from that era. One of the things that
Speaker 2: are typically cited as a signature achievement of his administration,
Speaker 2: certainly in terms of foreign policy, is the Camp David Accords,
Speaker 2: which brought peace between Egypt and Israel. You, as a
Speaker 2: supporter of the Palestinian cause, I see that somewhat differently.
Speaker 2: It really was a blow to Palestinians. They were excluded
Speaker 2: from the negotiations. It broke up this sort of Pan
Speaker 2: Arab unity. Egypt was in many ways their most powerful ally,
Speaker 2: and there were demands there. There are conditions for Israel
Speaker 2: to respect Palestinians sovereignty in the West Bank and in
Speaker 2: the Gaza Strip, but they were never enforced and were
Speaker 2: sort of always loose enough to allow Israel to continue
Speaker 2: the project of settlement expansion, which has continued under every
Speaker 2: single Israeli Prime minister, regardless of party or political you know,
Speaker 2: political inclination. And so, you know, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: it did bring peace between these two neighbors, resolved issues
Speaker 2: with the Sinai Peninsula. But on the other hand, it
Speaker 2: really was a blow ultimately to the strength and the solidarity,
Speaker 2: the Pan Arab solidarity of the Palestinian movement. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people also make a distinguished distinguished between
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter in office, and most people see his presidency
Speaker 2: as you know, sort of a failure. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of economic turmoil, there's a lot of political turmoil. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the you know, Iran hostage situation, which in many ways
Speaker 2: was engineered by the then incoming Ronald Reagan administration. We
Speaker 2: can leave that aside for another day, clearly was a
Speaker 2: blow to American self esteem. I mean, it's true, it
Speaker 2: was pretty well documented that they had this back channel
Speaker 2: negotiation of hey, you hold on to these hostages until
Speaker 2: I get into the White House, and then you release them,
Speaker 2: which exactly what happens.
Speaker 4: I mean, you want to.
Speaker 2: Talk about foreign election interference that kind of takes the cake.
Speaker 2: Most people feel though, his post presidency has been quite
Speaker 2: remarkable and quite dramatically different from the way that whether
Speaker 2: it's certainly Clinton Obama, whether the way that most presidents
Speaker 2: have in the modern era just used the post presidency
Speaker 2: as a chance to effectively cash in. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: think Obama is in some ways the worst example of this,
Speaker 2: because with the Clintons, at least there was some semblance
Speaker 2: of even though we're not big fans of the Clinton Foundation,
Speaker 2: here there was some semblance of like, oh, we're doing
Speaker 2: this for the international good, etc. With the Obama it's
Speaker 2: been clearly like just their own personal sort of like
Speaker 2: brand building and you know, their own legacy protection, versus
Speaker 2: truly being an associated with any larger cause than themselves.
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter, of course, famously very involved in global health initiatives,
Speaker 2: was working building himself homes for habitat for humanity into
Speaker 2: his nineties, which is quite extraordinary. And the other thing
Speaker 2: is he and his wife lived in the same modest
Speaker 2: Georgia house until, you know, until the very end, until
Speaker 2: they both ultimately passed. And part of this is a
Speaker 2: point that Michael Tracy and others have been making the
Speaker 2: fact that he didn't sell out to the corporate world
Speaker 2: left him free to speak out quite you know, plainly
Speaker 2: and boldly on any number of issues, one of those
Speaker 2: issues being Israel and Palestine. A lot of people are
Speaker 2: sharing this interview that he did a while back with
Speaker 2: Amy Goodman. Let me go ahead and pull up a
Speaker 2: little bit of this where he not only calls out
Speaker 2: Israel for you know, creating an apartheid state, but he
Speaker 2: also calls out apak and the influence of money in
Speaker 2: politics and explains why Americans, you know, are unable to
Speaker 2: see this conflict as clearly as he is. And let
Speaker 2: me go ahead and play a little bit of what
Speaker 2: he had to say.
Speaker 6: They were apartheid is is exactly accurate. You know, this
Speaker 6: is an area that's occupied by two powers. They're not
Speaker 6: completely separated. The Palestinians can even ride on the same
Speaker 6: roads that the Israels have created or built in Palestinian territory.
Speaker 6: The israel Is never see a Palestinian except there Israeli soldiers.
Speaker 6: The Palestinian has never seen is Ready except in the distance,
Speaker 6: except he is Ready soldiers. So within Palestinian territory they're
Speaker 6: absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in
Speaker 6: South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is
Speaker 6: the other definition of a part, that is, one side
Speaker 6: dominates the other, and he is ready to completely dominate
Speaker 6: the life of the Palestinian people.
Speaker 3: Why don't Americans know what you have seen?
Speaker 6: Americans don't want to know, and the Israelis don't want
Speaker 6: to know what is going on inside Palestine. It's a
Speaker 6: terrible human rights persecution that is far transcends what any
Speaker 6: outsider would imagine. And they're powerful political forces in America
Speaker 6: that prevents any objective analysis of the problem in the
Speaker 6: Holy Land. I think it's accurate to say that not
Speaker 6: a single member of Congress with which I'm with whom
Speaker 6: I'm familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel
Speaker 6: to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicize the
Speaker 6: plight of the Palestinians, or even to call publicly and
Speaker 6: repeatedly for good faith peace talks. There had been a
Speaker 6: day of peace talks now in more than seven years,
Speaker 6: So this is a taboo subject. And I would say
Speaker 6: that if any member of Congress did speak out as
Speaker 6: I've just described, they would probably not be back into
Speaker 6: Congress the next term.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 2: And I do think part of why he was able
Speaker 2: and felt free to speak out such as this, to
Speaker 2: go visit any world leader that effectively asked him to,
Speaker 2: even you know, people like Castro, who obviously most you know,
Speaker 2: living American presidents would not be going and visiting, was
Speaker 2: because he was not bought off by anyone. He truly
Speaker 2: was his own man until the end. And I think
Speaker 2: you know that aspect of his legacy to me is
Speaker 2: very is extremely admirable.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's a really good point. There's this
Speaker 3: sense of, you know, I hate when politicians say I've
Speaker 3: served in Congress or I've served the constituents of my
Speaker 3: district for a decade. It's not service to people anymore.
Speaker 3: That ethic is completely scrubbed from Washington. But Jimmy Carter
Speaker 3: is sort of old enough that you know, in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways he represented how elites used to see politics.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's like better or worse, but there's
Speaker 3: like this no bless oblige about the privilege of power,
Speaker 3: and that it would it would sort of be shameful
Speaker 3: and embarrassing to be so brazen as the Obamas are
Speaker 3: or Another great example is actually, as the Bidens were
Speaker 3: in Biden's host vice presidency, the brazenness with which they
Speaker 3: exploited their power would have been really shameful in other
Speaker 3: eras of American history. And Jimmy Carter somebody for him
Speaker 3: that is like very obvious, and we look at him
Speaker 3: as different now because he has handled it differently in
Speaker 3: the last year compared to how our presidents have in
Speaker 3: the last couple of decades. But the only thing I
Speaker 3: wanted to mention on that crystal is he's also old
Speaker 3: enough as a Democrat that he was friends with Billy
Speaker 3: Graham and the sort of evangelical wave in the moral
Speaker 3: majority people in the seventies and the eighties. And to
Speaker 3: have him talking about the Middle East in the way
Speaker 3: that he's talked about the Middle East since is incredibly noteworthy.
Speaker 3: Really rankles conservatives. Obviously, nobody needs me to say that,
Speaker 3: but it's clear that he really was informed by his
Speaker 3: faith throughout his tenure, also true and afterwards, and in
Speaker 3: a way that again is seen as crazy now it's
Speaker 3: seen as exceptional and different before a Southern Democrat in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, you know, it really wasn't well.
Speaker 2: And the contrast with Trump is also quite remarkable because
Speaker 2: Trump didn't wait till his post presidency to cash in.
Speaker 2: You know, famously, if you wanted to get in with him,
Speaker 2: you would stay at his hotel and make sure you
Speaker 2: ran up a big bill. Now he has his own
Speaker 2: crypto coin. He's selling sneakers selling it gus. You reference
Speaker 2: before selling a cologne. Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm
Speaker 2: before he entered the White House, just to make it
Speaker 2: clear that he had no potential conflict of interest. That's
Speaker 2: how dramatically different, you know, his view of the responsibilities
Speaker 2: of the presidency were versus Trump and the Trump family.
Speaker 2: I mean Trump cashing in with live golf, Jared Kushner
Speaker 2: getting two billion dollars from the Saudist. The list goes
Speaker 2: on and on. And you had David Seroa pointing out
Speaker 2: that another area where Carter was very clearly outspoken in
Speaker 2: a way that you just don't see from any of
Speaker 2: the other living American presidents is on money in politics.
Speaker 2: And he says he was the one ex president of
Speaker 2: the modern air to openly admit and lament the truth
Speaker 2: about what America has become in the post Citizens United
Speaker 2: era National Press Corp. Probably won't mention this, but it
Speaker 2: was really something. Jimmy Carter said, US is an oligarchy
Speaker 2: with unlimited political bribery, and you know, and really sounded
Speaker 2: off against the Citizens United ruling, which was one of
Speaker 2: a number of Supreme Court rulings that really opened the
Speaker 2: floodgates of huge money and politics, the likes of which
Speaker 2: were not possible in the past and which have reached,
Speaker 2: you know, unbelievable new dystopian heights, with Elon Musk in particular,
Speaker 2: putting in a court more than a quarter of a
Speaker 2: billion dollars into this last presidential campaign and basically expecting
Speaker 2: to run the government and achieve whatever policies that he
Speaker 2: wants to achieve, not the guy that just got elected,
Speaker 2: but that he wants to achieve. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: it's that's been a long time coming, and obviously both
Speaker 2: parties have decided to fully embrace big money in politics.
Speaker 2: But it's also noteworthy that, you know, as Jimmy Carter
Speaker 2: officially exits the scene, you know, we've reached a new,
Speaker 2: i think undeniable peak of American oligarchy that is quite disturbing,
Speaker 2: and you know, has clearly now not just disturbing lefties
Speaker 2: like me, but plenty of people within the MAGA coalition
Speaker 2: who are saying, you know what, this is actually really
Speaker 2: a problem.
Speaker 3: Totally, and it's for Jimmy Carter so and again, who
Speaker 3: was born in the nineteen twenties. We sort of had
Speaker 3: this voice from the past, and he was a relic
Speaker 3: of a different era, and I think that's kind of
Speaker 3: what's disturbing reflecting on his life is that, you know,
Speaker 3: there were many, many, deep, deep imperfections in the United
Speaker 3: States of America throughout his life, some of which have
Speaker 3: gotten dramatic better. But the political system. You know that
Speaker 3: he's kind of a voice of moral clarity I think
Speaker 3: from the past, and a lot of conservatives would tell
Speaker 3: me that's crazy. But from this sort of like populist
Speaker 3: perspective about the American political system, he was able to
Speaker 3: see it a little bit more clearly from his vantage point.
Speaker 3: And it's it's a sorry contrast with where things are today.
Speaker 3: As you mentioned, like the Trump organization, Eric Trump right
Speaker 3: now just broker to deal in Saudi Arabia for like
Speaker 3: a giant tower, I mean, like a completely different level
Speaker 3: at this point. Yeah, So the Obamas are out making
Speaker 3: Netflix documentaries and cashing it that don't make any money,
Speaker 3: but are you know, worth millions to Netflix because well
Speaker 3: it's the Obamas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Carter was also apparently the last Democrat to win
Speaker 2: a majority of counties in the presidential election. Usually Democrats
Speaker 2: in the modern era, they sort of run up the
Speaker 2: score in the cities. But you're we're all used to
Speaker 2: seeing the map where many of the rural areas are Republican.
Speaker 2: Now all of the rural areas are Republican, and so
Speaker 2: you know, it's a very different Democratic coalition at that point.
Speaker 2: I would say that some of the neoliberal policies that
Speaker 2: he helps to usher in, the trucking deregulation, the airline deregulation,
Speaker 2: ultimately the attacks on unions, all of that shift away
Speaker 2: from the New Deal era is a big part of
Speaker 2: the story of why Democrats lose so much of the country,
Speaker 2: lose so many of these you know, rural areas and
Speaker 2: rural states. And he really, you know, starts the trend
Speaker 2: in that direction, and the door on that era has
Speaker 2: been you know, officially, I guess slam shut here with
Speaker 2: with Trump retaking the White House. So in any place
Speaker 2: in any case, rest in peace, Jimmy Carter, and we
Speaker 2: can go ahead and move on to what's going on
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Laura Lumer and
Speaker 2: all these characters.
Speaker 3: Well, Crystal, it's a great day for Sager to be gone,
Speaker 3: because not only do we have a significant moment in
Speaker 3: presidential history, but we also have this roiling skirmish and
Speaker 3: MAGA world over h one B Visus, and we know
Speaker 3: that Sager has so little to say about both of
Speaker 3: these topics.
Speaker 2: As Indian Americans and they're placed in the country. Very
Speaker 2: few thoughts on any of these topics.
Speaker 3: Yes, and about American culture and Silicon Valley, so nothing
Speaker 3: to worry about. We will do our best to channel
Speaker 3: Sager's energy, if not his ideology. We do have a
Speaker 3: little bit of Sager's thoughts to share with everyone because
Speaker 3: he made some excellent points which will surprise nobody. But
Speaker 3: right now, Magaworld is, as we just alluded to, absolutely riven.
Speaker 3: And this is not a media narrative. This is a
Speaker 3: significant division just to be meta for a moment. We're
Speaker 3: not in any way you making this sound worse than
Speaker 3: it is. This is a very significant division in sort
Speaker 3: of Trump World and we've seen that just on Elon
Speaker 3: Musk's X feed itself over the last couple of days.
Speaker 3: So we're going to start with kind of the basics here.
Speaker 3: I'm going to share a little tear sheet so that
Speaker 3: you can see what some of the coverage has looked
Speaker 3: like over the last couple of days. Actually, really this
Speaker 3: has been going on for a while, but this all
Speaker 3: started when Donald Trump announced the appointment of somebody who
Speaker 3: is supportive of H one B visas to his new
Speaker 3: administration shortly before Christmas. And if you've been following this,
Speaker 3: if you're on Twitter, what you saw was immediately a
Speaker 3: major divide open up between people who support H one
Speaker 3: B visas and people who don't. And this sounds like
Speaker 3: maybe a minor wonky set of differences among Donald Trump's circle,
Speaker 3: but what it was actually doing was pitting Elon Musk
Speaker 3: and Vivek Ramaswami and people like David Sachs, another person
Speaker 3: who has been actually formally appointed to a post in
Speaker 3: the incoming Trump administration, against the quote unquote like America
Speaker 3: First World, the Stephen Miller camp of people who thought, listen,
Speaker 3: this was going to be the administration that is serious
Speaker 3: about actually cracking down on the sort of foreign labor
Speaker 3: competing with domestic labor. And so Donald Trump a couple
Speaker 3: of days into this, you can see the dateline on
Speaker 3: this is December twenty eighth, comes out and says I
Speaker 3: have many h one B visas on my properties, which, Crystal,
Speaker 3: is probably the funniest way for Donald Trump to wait
Speaker 3: into this debate, to be honest, But people were with
Speaker 3: baited breath. You had Elon Musk tweeting ceaselessly for a
Speaker 3: couple of days. Again, going into Christmas, Laura Lumer jumped
Speaker 3: in on this and we're going to basically break this
Speaker 3: all down. We have Rocanna, Congressman Rocanna, who's been roped
Speaker 3: into this as well because this is an issue that
Speaker 3: he's worked on and was invoked by Laura Lumer at
Speaker 3: one point, going to join the show and break some
Speaker 3: of this down for us as well. But this opened
Speaker 3: up a massive fight in Maga world essentially, and Elon
Speaker 3: Musk and Donald Trump are on the same side of
Speaker 3: it now. So Crystal, this is a big chunk that's
Speaker 3: been happening.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, this pre dates Christmas by a couple of days,
Speaker 3: but it is still raging. This is. It seems like
Speaker 3: it's about to carry into the new year and into
Speaker 3: the new administration, which is now some serious baggage to
Speaker 3: deal with. Tell me, as somebody on the left who's
Speaker 3: watching this play out over the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: what your reaction has been to it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that it sparked
Speaker 2: such a war, because it really does get at like
Speaker 2: a foundational question of how you see the world, and
Speaker 2: the campaign kind of glossed over some of these differences.
Speaker 2: But I think you and I and Sager and Ryan
Speaker 2: have been talking about some of the very clear ideological differences,
Speaker 2: especially between Elon Musk, David Sachs, veg Ramaswami, the sort
Speaker 2: of new tech bro coalition, and the Trumpest view of
Speaker 2: the world as it's been presented to the electorate. Now
Speaker 2: careful about how I say that, because obviously Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is decided with the globalist here. So what is trump
Speaker 2: Ism is always a little bit up for debate, But effectively,
Speaker 2: you know, the Trump narrative of the world is that
Speaker 2: you are struggling and you are getting screwed because of
Speaker 2: immigrants and quote unquote cultural leads, basically trans people, gender
Speaker 2: ideology like things coming out of Hollywood that you don't
Speaker 2: like and you don't think are the right values or
Speaker 2: direction for your family. But immigrants are a big, big
Speaker 2: part of that story of why Trump is telling you
Speaker 2: that you're struggling and you're screwed. That is a break
Speaker 2: from the traditional Republican message of if you're struggling, it's
Speaker 2: because you or in this instance, your culture is failed, failing,
Speaker 2: flawed in some way, So pull yourself up by your bootstraps,
Speaker 2: get it together, and effectively what you have in this
Speaker 2: proxy war over the H one B visas is a
Speaker 2: clash between these two worldviews. You know, Trump is, like
Speaker 2: I said, his ideology can be sort of hard to
Speaker 2: pin down at times because the truth of the matter
Speaker 2: is when he governed last time, he basically governed as
Speaker 2: like a Paul Ryan Republican with some exceptions, you know,
Speaker 2: tariff policy certainly being an exception there. But his biggest
Speaker 2: accomplishment is this giant tax cut for the rich, very
Speaker 2: traditional standard Heritage Foundation type of Republican.
Speaker 3: Policy, literal Paul Ryan tax plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was actually literally crafted by Paul Ryan. However,
Speaker 2: you know, in having this different narrative and story that
Speaker 2: he's selling that was a break from the way that
Speaker 2: Republicans had traditionally talked about economic issues. Elon is much
Speaker 2: more actually ideological. He's a fan of Javier Malay. He
Speaker 2: has been talking about how he wants to slash two
Speaker 2: trillion dollars from the budget. He believes that there needs
Speaker 2: to be this level of quote unquote pain among the public. Obviously,
Speaker 2: cutting two trillion dollars from the budget is going to
Speaker 2: necessitate significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs that
Speaker 2: Trump has always pledged that he wouldn't touch. He also
Speaker 2: went out and you know, was praising Javier Malay for
Speaker 2: rolling back tariffs. Trump always obviously is in love with tariffs,
Speaker 2: and his embraced tariffs more than ever before, at least
Speaker 2: in terms of his rhetoric. So, you know, ideologically, there's
Speaker 2: always been this huge divide between Musk and his pretty
Speaker 2: clear like kind of anarcho capitalist ideology and the way
Speaker 2: that trump Ism has been sold to the magabase. So
Speaker 2: that's where this really comes to a head, because what
Speaker 2: Musk and Vivek Ramaswami and all of them are saying
Speaker 2: is effectively.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, we've got a problem.
Speaker 2: With illegal immigrants. But actually we love legal immigrants. We
Speaker 2: want more immigrants in the country, and specifically for Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: he wants more workers that he can pay lower wages
Speaker 2: and that who are completely beholden to him, because that's
Speaker 2: you know, as a lefty, who does you know want
Speaker 2: more immigration in this country. I think we should have
Speaker 2: more legal immigrants. I believe that it's good for everyone.
Speaker 2: Is certainly good for those immigrants themselves. I have issues
Speaker 2: with the H one B program because it is so
Speaker 2: exploitative of those workers, and it is damaging to the
Speaker 2: American tech workers as well, because if you look at
Speaker 2: the numbers people who are brought in these quote unquote
Speaker 2: high skilled workers who are brought in on H one
Speaker 2: B visas, number one, they're paid less and number two,
Speaker 2: if you don't play ball with your employer and they
Speaker 2: fire you, you get deported. So I agree with the
Speaker 2: cultures and the Steve Bannons of the world when they
Speaker 2: say this is effectively a program of indentured servitude. But
Speaker 2: you know, as the world's richest man and a huge
Speaker 2: capitalist who also, by the way, gets massive government subsidies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all of those goodies.
Speaker 3: Well, H one B kind of is a government subsidi.
Speaker 4: That's one hundred percent true. That is one hundred percent true.
Speaker 2: He is looking out for him his own capitalist interest
Speaker 2: and this is a huge issue among the tech not
Speaker 2: just the tech right, just among the tech sector tech
Speaker 2: capitalist period. Which is why when Trump went on the
Speaker 2: All In podcast, which is like the Tech Broke podcast
Speaker 2: back several months ago during the campaign, Yosager took a
Speaker 2: mediate note of the fact that Trump offered up in
Speaker 2: that interview. Hey, I think if you graduate from any
Speaker 2: college in this country, you should have a green cart
Speaker 2: a stapled to your degree. That was clearly something he was,
Speaker 2: you know, knew he needed to give to that community
Speaker 2: in order to take in the hundreds of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars and the political support that he ultimately got from them.
Speaker 2: So you know, he chose his side quite a while ago.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't surprise me here that in the end
Speaker 2: he decides to side with Elon Musk because look that
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty million dollars plus that Elon threw
Speaker 2: unto the campaign, Like that wasn't for free. This is
Speaker 2: a key issue for him. He's going to get what
Speaker 2: he wants because he effectively bought his way into this government.
Speaker 3: Well, what's funny is what you said earlier about this
Speaker 3: also being a key issue for Donald Trump. The rhetoric
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump used repeatedly in his twenty sixteen campaign
Speaker 3: and his twenty twenty campaign, throughout his presidency and since
Speaker 3: about immigration has actually captured a sentiment that is is
Speaker 3: not false. It's not rooted in some false narrative. It
Speaker 3: is absolutely true. I mean that you can look at
Speaker 3: all of the Cato Institute studies, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: but you could also listen to people like Orange Cass
Speaker 3: who make the plan, or Bernie Sanders Sanders circa like
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine, who make the point play in this
Speaker 3: day that when you are creating so much unfair competition
Speaker 3: for American workers, meaning people who can be paid less,
Speaker 3: you're going to naturally depress the wages. Now, whether or
Speaker 3: not that is made up in different sectors of the
Speaker 3: economy is a different question. But when you are bringing
Speaker 3: H one B visa people into the country to do
Speaker 3: sort of mid range coding, whatever it is, Elon Musk
Speaker 3: has been tweeting again sort of relentlessly about how this
Speaker 3: is not work that Americans want to do. It's sort
Speaker 3: of the work that allows us to attract foreign labor
Speaker 3: like a magnet. It's great for tech, and then these
Speaker 3: people sort of stay and bring their talents into the
Speaker 3: United States. And obviously there's room for some of that,
Speaker 3: but it is also disincentivizing the creation of or it's
Speaker 3: disincentivizing Americans from going into the middle of those ladders too.
Speaker 3: And what really the middle I'm talking about, like the
Speaker 3: ladder of career work. Now this let's put this. I'm
Speaker 3: about to share this Laura Lumer tweet since we mentioned
Speaker 3: her because she was sort of instrumental in making this
Speaker 3: a viral debate, because not surprisingly, it's got very personal
Speaker 3: right away, obviously we mentioned Sharam Krishnan, who was appointed
Speaker 3: as the Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence at the
Speaker 3: White House, and well, I think in an AI position,
Speaker 3: it's natural that you have some oversight actually over the
Speaker 3: administration's policies on things like H one B. So Lumer
Speaker 3: tweets deeply disturbing to see thet his appointment as senior
Speaker 3: policy advisor. It's alarming to see the number of career
Speaker 3: leftists who are now being appointed to serving Trump's admin
Speaker 3: When they share views that are in direct opposition to
Speaker 3: Trump's America First agenda. So that just absolutely kicks it
Speaker 3: off because she's quoting krishan on saying anything to remove
Speaker 3: country caps for green card slash unlocked skilled immigration would
Speaker 3: be huge in response to an Elon Musk tweet about Doge.
Speaker 3: So then I am now going to share vi vik Ramaswami.
Speaker 4: Who I mean, it's just where really get interesting.
Speaker 3: This is the gasoline on the fire. So it's already
Speaker 3: a significant sort of internecine battle in Maga world. But
Speaker 3: then vivike Ramaswami comes in with this very interesting and
Speaker 3: very long post on X. If you're watching this you
Speaker 3: can see that I'm just scrolling through it. I would
Speaker 3: estimate off the top of my head it's like two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty words. This is the day after Christmas.
Speaker 3: Laura Lumer was like going after Rocanna whatever, like literally
Speaker 3: on Christmas, which we'll talk about. But the key part
Speaker 3: of this viviaq Ramaswami tweet is where he says it's
Speaker 3: all goes back to the quote Seaword Crystal, did you
Speaker 3: say that? He said that? It's a key part of
Speaker 3: it comes down to the sea word culture, So this
Speaker 3: is OK. That seaword. Yeah, I don't know what you
Speaker 3: were thinking of, Crystal, But he says, tough questions demand
Speaker 3: tough answers, and if we're really serious about fixing the problem,
Speaker 3: we have to confront the capital t truth. Our American
Speaker 3: culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.
Speaker 3: He then goes on to say a culture that venerates
Speaker 3: Corey for Boy Meets World, there's Zack and Slater over
Speaker 3: Screech and saved by the Bell, he will not produce
Speaker 3: the best engineers. He's also talking about Rkle and family matters.
Speaker 3: He goes on to talk about Friends. He says, more
Speaker 3: movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of Friends, which is incredibly
Speaker 3: offensive to me but probably other people too, but mostly me.
Speaker 3: Then he said, more books, less TV, more creating, less
Speaker 3: quote unquote chilling, more extracurriculars less quote unquote hanging out
Speaker 3: at the mall. He sounds like a parent in like
Speaker 3: a nineteen ninety five. He sounds like the dad in
Speaker 3: uh clueless. Actually, CHRISTI I was gonna say, like think
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 4: I it was better.
Speaker 2: This is one of I have many things to say
Speaker 2: about this, But one of the things that really triggered
Speaker 2: me here is, like I have a teenager.
Speaker 4: They don't hang out at the mall.
Speaker 2: It was better when we had the nineties mall culture
Speaker 2: because at least kids were like together, irl and had
Speaker 2: some sort of something community. I mean, yes, it's based
Speaker 2: on this like you know, gross consumerism, but at least
Speaker 2: there was some sort of community. Actually, now the smartphone
Speaker 2: culture is, which is I guess, you know, sort of
Speaker 2: closer to what Vague wants here of being you know,
Speaker 2: constantly on your device and being you know, buried in
Speaker 2: buried in tech world is way worse than when they
Speaker 2: were watching these sitcoms, which had lots of like family
Speaker 2: and sort of like basic morality community values associated with them.
Speaker 2: When they're watching those sitcoms and hanging out at the mall.
Speaker 2: That's one of many issues I take with us anyway,
Speaker 2: Percy Emily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know we're going to get in all
Speaker 3: of Mexican We have a soccer tweet, but it is
Speaker 3: it echoes something that you actually heard from JD Vance
Speaker 3: and hillbiliology that he's since kind of recanted, this critique
Speaker 3: of American culture, critique of the sort of white working class.
Speaker 3: It echoes a lot of the rhetoric that Donald Trump
Speaker 3: again was pretty instrumental in shifting the way Republicans at
Speaker 3: least talked, if not thought, about those issues. So let's share.
Speaker 3: This is Elon Musk. He says, the reason I'm in
Speaker 3: America this is on December twenty seventh, along with so
Speaker 3: many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of
Speaker 3: other companies that made America strug is because of h
Speaker 3: one B. Take a big step back and fuck yourself
Speaker 3: in the face. I will go to war on this issue,
Speaker 3: the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. He's channeling
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder there, as a lot of
Speaker 3: people have pointed out. But take a big step back.
Speaker 2: He also he also agreed with a post that called
Speaker 2: the mega people who were disagreeing with him retards and
Speaker 2: said that these people, I mean, it's very Hillary Clinton
Speaker 2: deplorables like taken to the umpteenth level. And you know,
Speaker 2: to go back to the vags tweet, which I think
Speaker 2: is really important to unpack for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2: Not only does it echo so it echoes Mitt Romney
Speaker 2: forty seven percent, Yes, it echoes makers and takers, it
Speaker 2: echoes Hillary Clinton deplorables. That's the language you're talking about,
Speaker 2: which has been a shared view among Republican Democratic elites,
Speaker 2: especially with regards to the white working class in particular.
Speaker 2: And so you know, to go out again. This is like,
Speaker 2: this is to me the core battle to say no.
Speaker 2: If you're having a problem, like if you're struggling, it's
Speaker 2: your fault. It's because you watch too many sitcomps, because
Speaker 2: you indulged in sleepovers and having friends when you should
Speaker 2: have been doing math tutoring. And by the way, you're
Speaker 2: screwing up your kids too because you don't have them
Speaker 2: in the like math Olympics every weekend. And your values,
Speaker 2: this is the core part. Your values are the wrong values.
Speaker 2: The only values that you should care about is having
Speaker 2: your kids in this extremely high stress rat race from
Speaker 2: birth where if every moment isn't spent developing their capabilities
Speaker 2: so that they can deliver shareholder value for the elon
Speaker 2: Musks of the world, then you're failing. So it's not
Speaker 2: only an attack on American culture, and I think specifically
Speaker 2: on white working class culture, which is extraordinary given you
Speaker 2: just had this massive like education realignment and non college
Speaker 2: educated voters overwhelmingly going for Republicans. It's not only attack
Speaker 2: on that culture, it's an attack on any value that's
Speaker 2: not just about delivering market share in a aggressive capitalist system.
Speaker 2: And that, to me is what was extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I mean for me, I like I have issues with
Speaker 2: the H one B program as constructed. I obviously disagree
Speaker 2: with both of these sides because I think all of this,
Speaker 2: whether you're blaming people and their culture or whether you're
Speaker 2: blaming immigrants, I think the real problem is point up
Speaker 2: at the Elon musk veig Ramaswami and Donald Trump's of
Speaker 2: the world, the billionaire oligarchs who have rigged the system
Speaker 2: to screw you and to benefit themselves. I think that's
Speaker 2: where the bulk of the blame needs to go. But
Speaker 2: the reason this was so extraordinary is because it really
Speaker 2: was a direct attack on especially white, non college educated voters,
Speaker 2: and frankly, a lot many many people pointed out that
Speaker 2: it's also the type of cultural critique that has been
Speaker 2: consistently leveled from Republicans at Black Americans. Basically like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're struggling not because of historic racism, but because you're
Speaker 2: too lazy and pull up your pants, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: now it's being trained at white Americans, and that also
Speaker 2: precipitated quite you know, quite a backlash and quite a
Speaker 2: lot of sentiment around this whole conversation.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it did listened, I think some genuine racism,
Speaker 3: because you get this this sense from some people who
Speaker 3: are out there defending Donald Trump that like, who are
Speaker 3: you the vague to critique white culture? Like only only
Speaker 3: whites can be mad about friends? Like how dare you
Speaker 3: as an outsider? But I think, on an even more
Speaker 3: serious note, so you just said something so important about
Speaker 3: how there's this idea of like so looking down maternalistically
Speaker 3: on the white working class, on the white middle class,
Speaker 3: even people who are going to college, who saying, I mean,
Speaker 3: that's what's so insane about this is critiquing the American
Speaker 3: culture while actually asking to import all of this foreign
Speaker 3: labor to compete with people who are going into that grind.
Speaker 3: As they're demanding you to stop watching friends start doing
Speaker 3: stem as though you can't do both, but like basically
Speaker 3: say more less sleepovers, more you know, like homework, whatever
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: And think about that, I mean, how much of you
Speaker 2: thought about like, look, at team like depression and suicyber like.
Speaker 2: If anything, teenagers need to be hanging out more with
Speaker 2: friends and doing like the things that he is deriding here.
Speaker 3: Yep. And then and then after you do all of that,
Speaker 3: after you forsake all of the sleepovers and the hangouts whatever,
Speaker 3: you're going to be compete with foreign labor that is
Speaker 3: going to be paid less. So you're in an unfair competition.
Speaker 3: And that has been happening for decades, and you and
Speaker 3: I have seen it. People who get outside of the
Speaker 3: Beltway have seen it. That has depressed, psychologically depressed the
Speaker 3: American working class because it feels like it is all
Speaker 3: for nothing when you are competing with people who came
Speaker 3: here and claimed asylum. And you and I may disagree
Speaker 3: on this, but it is like it's a real thing.
Speaker 3: And are being paid cash under the table for this
Speaker 3: landscaping job, and you're a landscaper and you cost them
Speaker 3: more money, and it's unfair competition.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why I think we need more legal
Speaker 2: immigration because when you do have undocumented workers, then yeah,
Speaker 2: employers are going to skirt labor law. They're gonna pay
Speaker 2: them under the table cash not have to pay the
Speaker 2: additional benefits and protections, and yes, that creates unfair competition.
Speaker 2: That's why, you know, like for example, with the just
Speaker 2: to stick on H one B example, it's not that
Speaker 2: I'm opposed to bringing in high skilled workers or immigrants.
Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to that at all. But you can't
Speaker 2: set up a program guest worker. Programs are inherently exploitative,
Speaker 2: like if you are tied to your employer and if
Speaker 2: you get fired, then you're deported. Like of course they
Speaker 2: can abuse you in any myriad of ways and pay
Speaker 2: you less and you know, screw you over, and that yes,
Speaker 2: depresses wages across the board. So it's exploitative all the
Speaker 2: way around in that instance. So you know, that's why
Speaker 2: most of the studies show is even in when you
Speaker 2: had like the Maurial boat lift and they had this
Speaker 2: huge influx of Cuban migrants into Florida, it actually didn't
Speaker 2: significantly impact the wages of the native born workforce. The
Speaker 2: problem is when you have programs that are set up
Speaker 2: such that they are inherently exploitative, and when you have
Speaker 2: so few legal pathways for people to come into the
Speaker 2: country that they're coming in in undocumented fashion and then yeah,
Speaker 2: getting paid under the table and you know themselves getting
Speaker 2: screwed and undercutting the local workforce as well.
Speaker 3: Let's roll this clip of Steve Bannon, because it just
Speaker 3: for a sense of where the battle lines have been drawn.
Speaker 3: And I think how significant again this actually is. This
Speaker 3: is this is not like, this is not the media
Speaker 3: trying to create problems where there aren't problems. And you
Speaker 3: can take it from Steve Bannon himself, who weighed in
Speaker 3: on all this again, like it's not surprising. These battle
Speaker 3: lines are not surprising, by the way. What is surprising
Speaker 3: to me is how surprised Elon Muskin, like the sort
Speaker 3: of David Sacks people were by this. So let's listen to.
Speaker 8: Bannon then nastier tweets he put up last night about
Speaker 8: MAGA being racist, which is the last refuge of a
Speaker 8: scoundrel in modern politics, to to quote Andrew Breitbart via
Speaker 8: Johnson right this last night we put up on the screen.
Speaker 8: I appreciate it. This is Elon Musk. The reason I'm
Speaker 8: in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX,
Speaker 8: Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong
Speaker 8: is because of h one b take a big step
Speaker 8: back in. F yourself all caps in the face. F
Speaker 8: yourself in the face. I will go to war on
Speaker 8: this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, tough guy, that you're going to go to
Speaker 8: war on the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.
Speaker 8: You're you're a manchild. I hate to make it personal,
Speaker 8: but what you have done is try to trash individuals
Speaker 8: punching down. Remember the first rule a gladiator school, bro,
Speaker 8: don't punch down. Be the punch a peer, a punch up,
Speaker 8: I responded last night, someone please notify notify Child Protective
Speaker 8: Services need to do a wellness check on this toddler.
Speaker 8: I hate to be snarky, but I think the moment
Speaker 8: called for it. When people come uph you got to
Speaker 8: take the temperature. No, we're not going to take the
Speaker 8: temperature down. We're not going to take the temperature down.
Speaker 8: Oh no, oh no, oh no, we do not. It's
Speaker 8: no backing down. It's doubling down. It's no retreat. It's
Speaker 8: fixed by NEETs in its advance, and it's not surrender.
Speaker 8: It's victory. We're going to win this. Let me repeat.
Speaker 8: The H one B VISA program is a total incomplete
Speaker 8: scam concocted by the lords of easy money on Wall Street,
Speaker 8: in the Ola Garks in Silicon Valley to both initially
Speaker 8: to just increase profit margins, but there's a darker element
Speaker 8: to it today, a contempt of America and American citizens,
Speaker 8: and we're not going to tolerate it.
Speaker 3: Crystal. Again, that's like a sample of what's been happening,
Speaker 3: and imagine what's been happening behind closed doors over the
Speaker 3: last few days. But this is a hugely, hugely significant divide.
Speaker 3: He invoked the term oligarchs. It was always going to
Speaker 3: be tense to have the oligarchs allegedly fixing the problem
Speaker 3: of oligarchy that Steve Bannon has his fixed banets on
Speaker 3: and has sort of rallied the Mega Coalition to take on.
Speaker 3: In Elon Musk's ex bio right now, it says, you know,
Speaker 3: the people voted for significant government reform. Yes, they voted
Speaker 3: actually for significant government reform so that we no longer
Speaker 3: function as an oligarchy. But the oligarchs, who understand that
Speaker 3: the public wants significant government reform, are much less comfortable
Speaker 3: with significantly reforming what functions as an oligarchy. When it
Speaker 3: serves them because for some reasons that are sinister and
Speaker 3: some that are just natural, they don't see themselves necessarily
Speaker 3: as oligarchs in a pejorative sense. They see themselves a
Speaker 3: lot away. A lot of the leftist oligarchs see themselves
Speaker 3: as the sort of benevolent overlords who know what's best
Speaker 3: for the people out there watching friends and you know,
Speaker 3: eating bond bonds or whatever it is. And it makes
Speaker 3: it really difficult, makes it very difficult to sort of
Speaker 3: actually go full maga when you are an oligarch. And
Speaker 3: again that has always been clear. We have been very
Speaker 3: clear about that on this show in our coverage. But
Speaker 3: again behind closed doors, these tensions have simmered, but never
Speaker 3: I think bubbled over in the way we've seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't really know why people thought they
Speaker 2: were voting against oligarchy when you have the most like
Speaker 2: this is by far the number of billionaires in Trump's
Speaker 2: administration now it's over a dozen. You knew coming in
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk was basically bankrolling, you know, a large
Speaker 2: chunk of the entire campaign in a way that is
Speaker 2: truly of an order of magnitude different than we've ever
Speaker 2: seen from either party ever in the in the past,
Speaker 2: you know, you probably have to go back to like
Speaker 2: like you Morgan to uh to really see this level
Speaker 2: of just oligarch control over the country and over the
Speaker 2: administration to see anything that is even approaches a parallel
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk. And it's not like this was hidden.
Speaker 2: This was clear, His ideology was clear, his influence, his
Speaker 2: whole of government mandate through Doge, all of this was
Speaker 2: really spelled out. And so you know, now you've got
Speaker 2: Trump like, yeah, I'm with Elon. I'm with Elon. I
Speaker 2: made that, I made the the deal was made months ago,
Speaker 2: and he's going to get what he wants. So since
Speaker 2: that has happened, since Trump has said, yeah, I'm on
Speaker 2: the side of the oligarchs. These are my guys, and
Speaker 2: they're going to get their way. Do I see a
Speaker 2: hue and cry from the you know, the MAGA base. No,
Speaker 2: not really, because it's never Trump's fault. It's always you know,
Speaker 2: oh he was manipulated, Oh this or that, lots of
Speaker 2: there's lots of cope in the timeh maybe he didn't
Speaker 2: really mean it the way that the media portrayed it.
Speaker 2: The other cope from the David Sacks, the world is like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we're really not that far apart, and this
Speaker 2: is all just like a left wing sigh up to
Speaker 2: drive a wedge between us, because you know, in some ways,
Speaker 2: I think this cake is already baked, and I think
Speaker 2: Elon is going to get his way on anything that
Speaker 2: Elon really significantly wants, because that is the deal that
Speaker 2: was made here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and since Crystal mentioned David Sacks, so you can
Speaker 3: look at this post he put on ax Elon I
Speaker 3: said that H one B should be overhauled, that it
Speaker 3: should focus on exceptional talent and high value areas, and
Speaker 3: that the scamson low paid jobs should end. This is
Speaker 3: not to say there aren't still differences, but less than
Speaker 3: it first appeared. Time to move forward as one team.
Speaker 3: Definitely cope, Crystal, because basically the Bannon position is still
Speaker 3: I think mutually exclusive with that position, and this question
Speaker 3: becomes what a level priority it is. So let's go
Speaker 3: back to Sagur here, because as promised, we want to
Speaker 3: bring him in. And this is sort of again it's
Speaker 3: a hobby horse of his. He says, I will split
Speaker 3: the difference with the fig the reason that Indians and
Speaker 3: other successful minorities in the US succeed is by blending
Speaker 3: the culture of hard work and familia dedication with the
Speaker 3: American spirit of dynamism born from the founders and the
Speaker 3: frontier spirit pure Asian culture encourages wrote memorization, conformity, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. He says, the culture I want to venerate
Speaker 3: is the American culture which beat the Axis powers in
Speaker 3: World War two, peak Sager, it had important institutional checks
Speaker 3: against hedonism, et cetera, et cetera. And he says the
Speaker 3: best way to recreate that culture is an immigration moratorium,
Speaker 3: as we did in the early nineteen hundred and nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: And then he goes on to say, I'll end with
Speaker 3: the plea to Americans of Indian descent reject the growing
Speaker 3: calls for Indian identity politics or DEI slash wokeness by
Speaker 3: another name. So, Chrystal, I think there's a lot we
Speaker 3: could do two hours a two hour segment basically on
Speaker 3: all of this drama, and Sager might still force you
Speaker 3: to at some point, but it is genuinely fascinating because
Speaker 3: it's this it's just this critique of the culture and
Speaker 3: immigration at the same time as like a lot of
Speaker 3: it's coming very top down, and the sort of down
Speaker 3: up part is being stifled by the down up. Candidate
Speaker 3: President elective should say, well, I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to go see hard On soccer when he's
Speaker 2: not here. He and I can fight this out when
Speaker 2: he gets back. But I think a lot of this
Speaker 2: cultural talk is like mumbo jumbo, like invented mumbo jumbo,
Speaker 2: and policy like to me, culture is largely downstream of policy,
Speaker 2: and usually when politicians are talking about culture, it's a
Speaker 2: way for them to escape accountability for their own policy
Speaker 2: decisions and their own corrupt dealings, which are the more
Speaker 2: proximate and certainly more controllable source of so much pain
Speaker 2: in the public. So, you know, when you have Hillary
Speaker 2: Clinton to use someone that everyone watching the show will
Speaker 2: find to be villainous when she's talking about deplorables, it's like,
Speaker 2: screw you, lady, Like your husband's the one who didn't
Speaker 2: have to and shift the jobs overseas. You're the ones
Speaker 2: that's supporting supported you know, PNTR and supports the Transpecific
Speaker 2: Trade Partnership. You were happy to sell out the entire
Speaker 2: industrial Midwest in order to you know, boost the profits
Speaker 2: of giant multinational corporations. So how dare you look down
Speaker 2: your nose and say we're failing because of some like
Speaker 2: inherent character flaw or cultural flaw. Screw you like you
Speaker 2: are the ones who crafted these policies that screwed the country,
Speaker 2: vast loss of the country over in favor of American oligarchs.
Speaker 2: And Elon Musk is well, he's not even I mean,
Speaker 2: he's from South Africa, but he is one of those oligarchs.
Speaker 2: This is he has one of He is one of
Speaker 2: the largest Pentagon contractors. There may be no one in
Speaker 2: history who has gotten richer off the American taxpayer than
Speaker 2: South African born Elon Musk, who now has been put
Speaker 2: in charge of the very government that is the only
Speaker 2: thing that could check his abuses, exploitation and ambitions. So
Speaker 2: you know, I obviously have been I've been trying to
Speaker 2: talk about this for months now. I've been trying to
Speaker 2: sound the alarm about Listen, even if you like Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: imagine it's Jeff Bezos, Imagine it's Mark Zuckerberg, Imagine it's
Speaker 2: Bill Gates.
Speaker 4: Like, as a.
Speaker 2: Matter of principle, we have to reject oligarchs having full
Speaker 2: and complete control of government, and that's basically where we
Speaker 2: are now. And I think you know Trump on this issue,
Speaker 2: he had already flipped on this issue, right, He already
Speaker 2: signaled this during the campaign. He flipped on carried interest,
Speaker 2: he flipped on crypto, he flipped on TikTok tik, which
Speaker 2: we're about to get into, which I actually support the
Speaker 2: new position. All of these things were not out of principle.
Speaker 2: It's because that's where the money was, so that's where
Speaker 2: he went. He has already thrown his lot in with
Speaker 2: this direction of American oligarchy for the country. And I
Speaker 2: think I don't care left right center. To me, it's
Speaker 2: not a partisan or ideological issue. I think that is
Speaker 2: deeply dystopian and disturbing and pretends really a very dark
Speaker 2: direction for American democracy.
Speaker 3: And I'll just finally split the difference with Sager, splitting
Speaker 3: the difference, which is that I think the public does
Speaker 3: have agency, and this is where jd. Vance sort of
Speaker 3: flipped himself, and that he was sort of pointing the
Speaker 3: finger at the white working class and saying this is
Speaker 3: a sort of it's similar to what the critique Republicans
Speaker 3: have made for a long time of the inner city
Speaker 3: black working classes that you just aren't pulling yourself up
Speaker 3: by your bootstraps and you can. And again, like I
Speaker 3: just think people do have agency. But I also think
Speaker 3: that the problems in our culture have been stirred from
Speaker 3: the top down. So if you want to start saying
Speaker 3: that there's a problem with American culture, you should actually
Speaker 3: look at how the oligarchs. I you would talk about
Speaker 3: this in terms of a lot of different things like
Speaker 3: marriage is an example, or childry. Like we don't have
Speaker 3: to get into all of it, but like, let's not
Speaker 3: pretend that these TV shows aren't bankrolled, by the way,
Speaker 3: by people like Steve Bannon who bankrolled Seinfeld. Maybe that's
Speaker 3: what this one is actually all about, Crystal. He is
Speaker 3: very personally offended that they can invoked sitcom culture in America,
Speaker 3: But I mean, in all seriousness, like the culture is
Speaker 3: very It's gotten a little bit more democratic because of
Speaker 3: things like TikTok, but it was very much dictated by
Speaker 3: like all the Garks. So on that note, Crystal, we
Speaker 3: have Congressman Rocanna here to help us break some of
Speaker 3: this down as well, because he was evoked, as we
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, by Laura Lumer and has been waiting into
Speaker 3: the debate. Let's get to that, all right, guys.
Speaker 2: So we are very fortunate to be joined this morning
Speaker 2: by Congressman Rocanna, who actually represents Silicon Valley and was
Speaker 2: also catching quite a number of stories in this whole
Speaker 2: elon musk Laura Lumer Maga versus the tech tech bro.
Speaker 2: Great to have you, congresson, Great to be on.
Speaker 9: Happy holidays to everyone watching.
Speaker 4: Yeah, same to you. Let me go and put this
Speaker 4: up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is from your friend Laura Lumer, who had some
Speaker 2: choice words about you and this individual that Trump has
Speaker 2: named as his I guess quote unquote ai Zar. So
Speaker 2: she says, Democrat congress and Rocanna from the leftist Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley and migrant dominated hellhole known as California, wants to
Speaker 2: gaslight anyone in everyone who poses h one b visas
Speaker 2: and tech bros who are infiltrating the Trump admin. Rowe,
Speaker 2: why aren't you disclosing the fact that Surium Krishnan is
Speaker 2: one of your donors? That's the new incoming, ais are
Speaker 2: You're a Democrat with big tech donors who love mass migration.
Speaker 2: He gave your Democrat congressional campaign a donation of thirty
Speaker 2: three hundred dollars and twenty three thirty three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: in twenty four, less than one month before the presidential election.
Speaker 2: Of course, you're defending the big tech bros who serve
Speaker 2: as your sugar daddies. You are corrupt. Here are the receipts, Congressman.
Speaker 2: Your response to this attack, well.
Speaker 5: Laura Lumer had attacked Indian Americans when Kamala Harris was running,
Speaker 5: saying that we can't put an Indian American in the
Speaker 5: White House. I had suggested that she come to the
Speaker 5: White House when Kamala Harris would win and have Masala
Speaker 5: Chai with me. Unfortunately, Harris didn't win, or I would
Speaker 5: have left to have had Masala Chai with Laura Lumer.
Speaker 5: But you know, she attacked me for having contributions from
Speaker 5: Shrram and I replied saying, yes, he contributed to my campaign.
Speaker 5: And he has an extraordinary story. I mean, he's an
Speaker 5: immigrant who came to this country in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 5: He's become a citizen, he's contributed, he started companies, and
Speaker 5: we should be proud of the fact that people from
Speaker 5: around the world, the best and brightest, want to come
Speaker 5: to the United States.
Speaker 3: And when that comes to the H one BBS's, which
Speaker 3: obviously were the sort of policy niche that kicked off
Speaker 3: this huge internescing conflict that's royal mag world over the
Speaker 3: last couple of weeks, Congressman. The allegation is that they
Speaker 3: depress American wages because you're able to pay people on
Speaker 3: the H one b visas less than you would pay Americans,
Speaker 3: and it becomes almost a system of indentured servitude. But
Speaker 3: this is something that a lot of people in your
Speaker 3: circles feel very strongly about. Elon Musk himself obviously came
Speaker 3: out and came out swinging and said he will defend
Speaker 3: these programs to his dying breath because he feels so
Speaker 3: strongly that they are examples of sort of what you
Speaker 3: were just talking about, the way this country is a
Speaker 3: magnet for talent from around the world and people who
Speaker 3: are then sort of become part of the American melting pot,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So where do You've talked about this a lot,
Speaker 3: But where do you fall on the H one bvs
Speaker 3: is amidst all of those allegations swirling in Trump.
Speaker 5: World, Well, I think that there has been abuse of
Speaker 5: the H one B visas. There's no doubt that there
Speaker 5: has been abuse where people are paid below market wages
Speaker 5: and that undercuts Americans and you basically have no freedom.
Speaker 9: If you're here on an H one B visa and.
Speaker 5: You leave your employer, then you also are going to
Speaker 5: lose your status in this country. And there have been
Speaker 5: several companies, particularly IT outsourcing firms that have abused it
Speaker 5: significantly and they're getting a large chunk of the lotteries.
Speaker 5: The other thing is that while it's capped at eighty
Speaker 5: five thousand, a lot of exemptions are granted, and so
Speaker 5: you really have three hundred four hundred thousand being granted.
Speaker 5: And so I have said that we need reform, and
Speaker 5: I'm actually when I first got to Congress my first
Speaker 5: year in Congress twenty seventeen, god on Bill Press Grello
Speaker 5: unfortunately has passed away bipartisan reform bill with Grassley and
Speaker 5: Durbin and Paul Gossar. Let's make sure that you're not
Speaker 5: underpaying H one B visa folks, you're not manipulating things
Speaker 5: so that entry level positions are being granted H one b's.
Speaker 5: It's really supposed to be for exceptional talent and that's
Speaker 5: not the case, but that doesn't mean that we're not
Speaker 5: for immigrants coming to the United States, and really immigrants
Speaker 5: are contributing, should be given a green card process of
Speaker 5: expediting green cards so that you don't have this situation
Speaker 5: of leverage.
Speaker 2: What did you make, Congressman of the vak Ramaswami's long
Speaker 2: post about American cultural mediocrity and how we need to
Speaker 2: have fewer sleepovers, more math tutoring, less hanging out at
Speaker 2: the mall, less Boy meets World, more math, Olympics, less TV,
Speaker 2: more books, etcetera, etcetera. Do you think that Americans have
Speaker 2: and I think this was aimed in particular at the
Speaker 2: American white working class, do you think that they embrace
Speaker 2: a culture of mediocrity?
Speaker 9: Absolutely not.
Speaker 5: I'd love to talk to him about his upbreaking I'll
Speaker 5: tell you about mine in Council Rocket High School at
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania because I was one of those nerds on the
Speaker 5: math mathletes, and I happened to be a valedictoria by
Speaker 5: local school.
Speaker 9: But I also played Little League.
Speaker 5: And I was terrible at the plate, and every people
Speaker 5: said watch the bunt when I went up, but people said,
Speaker 5: everyone plays, you know, I mean that was the spirit.
Speaker 5: And I had friends who played football for Council Rock
Speaker 5: and friends who went into acting in music and what
Speaker 5: it would have been such a boring experience if everyone
Speaker 5: in my school was interested in becoming a math lete.
Speaker 5: That's that's part of the problem. So the school age
Speaker 5: in Silicon Valley now where it's like everyone's parents work
Speaker 5: at Google and everyone wants to go and do well
Speaker 5: at STEM. And I think what makes America extraordinary is that, yes,
Speaker 5: we have people who are doing interested in math, but
Speaker 5: we have people who are interested in music and the
Speaker 5: arts and the humanities and writing and sports, and that
Speaker 5: creates this vie culture and that should be celebrated. Then
Speaker 5: the results speak for themselves. I mean, look at all
Speaker 5: the Nobel laureates that we have in physics, in medicine
Speaker 5: and chemistry. Look at all the innovation. I mean, if
Speaker 5: I guess, my question for Vivik would be, if there
Speaker 5: was something so fundamentally flawed with American culture, how is
Speaker 5: it that we are continuing to produce incredible innovation.
Speaker 9: So it just seemed a little glib.
Speaker 5: It's something I disagree with, and I'm quite fond of
Speaker 5: my upbringing, and I don't think there was too much
Speaker 5: emphasis on sports or music. I probably should have paid
Speaker 5: more attention to some of the music or to help
Speaker 5: me in politics work.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny you say that because when I
Speaker 2: was reading the vague description of what he thought, like
Speaker 2: the ideal childhood is, which is this, like you know,
Speaker 2: from the moment they're born, they got to get in
Speaker 2: the right preschool, and they got to be you know,
Speaker 2: trained in math and ready to take on their stem
Speaker 2: career and deliver shareholder value for whether it's Elon Musk
Speaker 2: or someone else. Actually, the people that I've seen raise
Speaker 2: their kids most like that was when I lived in Manhattan,
Speaker 2: and like wealthy Manhattan nights, who would be the type
Speaker 2: of people who are you know, engaged in like the
Speaker 2: Varsity Blues scandal, are so obsessed with First it's they
Speaker 2: got to be in the right play group, and then
Speaker 2: they got to be in the right preschool, and we
Speaker 2: got to have Latin tutoring, and they need to take
Speaker 2: up fencing because that's the place where you're most likely
Speaker 2: to get you know, a scholarship or get an edge
Speaker 2: in an Ivy League institution. And I've found it, frankly,
Speaker 2: kind of terrible, Like not because that there's any problem
Speaker 2: with wanting to create a lot of enrichment for your children,
Speaker 2: but it just seemed like the whole value of First
Speaker 2: of all, it's sort of erased any sort of just
Speaker 2: delight of childhood, right. And second of all, it really
Speaker 2: erased any values outside of what you can achieve as
Speaker 2: a market participant, right, friends, family, you know, like enjoying
Speaker 2: pop culture, contributing to your community. Those pieces were secondary
Speaker 2: to just like winning this high stakes rat race. And
Speaker 2: you know, I think I think part of what has
Speaker 2: been appealing about Trump to many people who you know,
Speaker 2: obviously I disagree with his view of the world and
Speaker 2: certainly his attacks on immigrants I find to totally miss
Speaker 2: the point of what the real problems are in America.
Speaker 2: But I think part of some of the language there
Speaker 2: has been about, you know, there's more to life and
Speaker 2: there's more to a society than just GDP growth. And
Speaker 2: the Vig's post to me was sort of a direct
Speaker 2: attack on, you know, on the idea that you could
Speaker 2: value something other than what your market value was and
Speaker 2: what you can contribute to overall GDP growth.
Speaker 9: That's very well put, Chris.
Speaker 5: I like, you know, a lot of my political sense
Speaker 5: to the extent I have any sense, I think about
Speaker 5: what were the kids growing up on my stream in
Speaker 5: Amsterdam Avenue, Bucks County think and there were kids who
Speaker 5: were kids of an electrician, of a nurse, if a teacher,
Speaker 5: of an HVAC technician, the guy who at the pool
Speaker 5: it was the sort of big vice president at some company.
Speaker 5: But we all were on the same street, and we
Speaker 5: all celebrated different holidays.
Speaker 9: We engaged and.
Speaker 5: You played together. And I think that what would very
Speaker 5: mystic is this, it's a community. I mean, the kids
Speaker 5: of the HVAC technician at Electrician were no less fulfilled
Speaker 5: or happy or contributing than the kids today or kids
Speaker 5: of Google executives. And if anything, there was probably more
Speaker 5: happiness on the street where I was I was growing up.
Speaker 9: But so if his point is that.
Speaker 5: America should make sure that we have a rigorous education
Speaker 5: and and and we should encourage education, of course, no
Speaker 5: one is going to deny that he.
Speaker 4: Wants to get rid of the Department of Education.
Speaker 3: But that's.
Speaker 9: But that's not what he's saying.
Speaker 5: And it looked it's musicians often and artists where the
Speaker 5: ones are going to question income inequality or it questions.
Speaker 9: Their social excesses.
Speaker 5: It's often athletes athletics where we have people regardless of class.
Speaker 9: It's one of the few things regardless.
Speaker 5: Of class, where oh, you're a forty nine Ers fan,
Speaker 5: it doesn't really matter whether you're the kid if a
Speaker 5: billionaire or the kid if a janitor. Your team is
Speaker 5: going to win. I mean, there's so few experiences in
Speaker 5: America that are class list. I guess even sports now
Speaker 5: you get whether you're in the suites or whether you
Speaker 5: go and actually watch a game from the stands, there's
Speaker 5: class introduced to it, but it's not like, you know,
Speaker 5: you flying has become totally about class, and you can
Speaker 5: live your life where you go to school, your friends
Speaker 5: are totally with a certain group of folks and economic
Speaker 5: class and sports cuts through that. So I think Vivik's
Speaker 5: not looking at all of the incredible things that sports
Speaker 5: and music bring to American society.
Speaker 3: I think we can all agree there are good faith
Speaker 3: defenses of the H and B program that people make
Speaker 3: them in perfectly good faith, especially people with personal experience.
Speaker 3: But what the Steve Bannons of the world right now
Speaker 3: are saying is that the people in Silicon Valley, probably
Speaker 3: people in your district, Congressman who defend HM and bbs
Speaker 3: is so vigorously are coming to this with the perspective
Speaker 3: that is utterly cynical and self interested, and it really
Speaker 3: is about profit. It is about undercutting American labor. It's
Speaker 3: about sort of their bottom lines. So again, as somebody
Speaker 3: who sort of familiar with the people who are defending
Speaker 3: HEB so vigorously, is there something to what Steve Bannon
Speaker 3: is saying that this is something that is cynical and
Speaker 3: is about profit over the country itself.
Speaker 5: Steve Bannon had some valid criticisms of the program. You know,
Speaker 5: I probably maybe the headline of this, but you know,
Speaker 5: he's right that there are companies who are underpaying people
Speaker 5: coming from overseas, and that's not good, by the way,
Speaker 5: for the people they're bringing over because they're often trapped
Speaker 5: in these jobs being underpaid, and it's undermining American wages.
Speaker 5: And the other point I saw Steve make, which is
Speaker 5: true with some of these universities prioritize foreign students because
Speaker 5: they want to get the full pay for their tuition
Speaker 5: and we're not providing the same free public college to
Speaker 5: American students, and so you know, they're getting paid. Often
Speaker 5: these students are coming, they're either having the foreign governments
Speaker 5: pay a full freight, or they may have parents who
Speaker 5: are scrounging up and paying the full money, and then
Speaker 5: American students are not are being denied the opportunity in
Speaker 5: those universities.
Speaker 9: That's happening in California. So I think that anyone who's.
Speaker 5: Being fair about this should be calling for major reform
Speaker 5: on the H one B program. You could be pro
Speaker 5: immigrant and against exploitation, right, I mean, there's an issue
Speaker 5: about do we believe that we should attract immigrants to America?
Speaker 5: Of course, do we believe that we should exploit them
Speaker 5: to hurt American workers and labors now? And you can
Speaker 5: also be for education for all Americans and make understand
Speaker 5: that when you have wealthy foreign students coming and paying
Speaker 5: full freight, that that's not fair sometimes for American students.
Speaker 2: My last question for you, Congressman, is you've been sort
Speaker 2: of I don't want to mischaracterize. You can you can
Speaker 2: clarify if this isn't correct, But you've been open to
Speaker 2: certainly working with Elon Musk on Dode. You've been I
Speaker 2: would say friendlier towards him than I have been. You know,
Speaker 2: one of the things that came out of this conversation too,
Speaker 2: is just the level of influence he's been able to
Speaker 2: buy with the Trumpet ministries. You know, Trump has now
Speaker 2: reversed his position on H one B's and obviously this
Speaker 2: was an issue that was really important to Elan. Elon's
Speaker 2: been given this entire hole of government mandate. He is
Speaker 2: one of the government's largest contractors. He has massive conflicts
Speaker 2: of interest. You know, what are your thoughts about rising
Speaker 2: oligarchy in America viz a vi Elon Musk?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I don't like it that billionaires
Speaker 5: can pay the kind of money they can and spend
Speaker 5: the kind of money they can to influence elections. But Chrystal,
Speaker 5: We've got to be honest, it was both sides. I mean,
Speaker 5: we had one hundred and fifty billionaires on our side.
Speaker 5: We had more billionaires on our side than their side,
Speaker 5: So you know, it's billion is agree.
Speaker 2: I agree with that Roe, but I will say that
Speaker 2: there's a fundamental, like qualitative difference when you're talking about
Speaker 2: a quarter of a billion dollars, which is something we
Speaker 2: haven't seen before, and the whole of government mandate that
Speaker 2: he's been granted. So there's no doubt that both sides
Speaker 2: have completely embraced big money in politics. Kama had plenty
Speaker 2: of billionaires backing her. That is certainly the case. I
Speaker 2: do think that the Elon Musk influence the richest man
Speaker 2: on the planet is of a character that we haven't
Speaker 2: seen before.
Speaker 5: That's fair and I you know, I mean we had
Speaker 5: probably people giving fifty billion or one hundred billion, and
Speaker 5: not two hundred and fifty billion at billion. And I
Speaker 5: have a post all of it. I don't have a
Speaker 5: super pack. I don't take a die a pack and
Speaker 5: lobby's money. I have said we need to as a
Speaker 5: democratic party say no super pac body in democratic primaries,
Speaker 5: and we should be doing what Maine did is regulating,
Speaker 5: at the very least the amount a person can contribute
Speaker 5: to a super pack, just like they get regulated what
Speaker 5: they can contribute to an individual. They can only give
Speaker 5: me thirty three hundred dollars. Why should Elon must be
Speaker 5: able to give two hundred and fifty million to a
Speaker 5: super pak. You should be able to give thirty three
Speaker 5: hundred dollars to it. Before you overturn Citizens United, Let's
Speaker 5: at least regulate these super PACs. May it passed by
Speaker 5: seventy percent. The DNC chair should be saying we're going
Speaker 5: to run that initiative in every state in this country.
Speaker 5: By the way, I'll just float. Jonathan Jackson is being
Speaker 5: talked about in Congress that we want him to get
Speaker 5: in the race for DNC chair. So I'm hoping he
Speaker 5: will do that, and I'm hoping he'll make some news
Speaker 5: in the next a couple of weeks.
Speaker 9: But You're also right.
Speaker 5: About the conflicts of interest, and I've said that there
Speaker 5: needs to be regulations on conflicts of interest. With both
Speaker 5: the VACAN and an Elon, they shouldn't be able to
Speaker 5: avoid these conflicts of interest.
Speaker 9: But you know why Trump.
Speaker 5: Hangs on to Elon because Trump is fundamentally eighties wealth. Right,
Speaker 5: His whole stick is nineteen eighties Hulk Hogan. I mean
Speaker 5: I told you mentioned him. I hadn't thought of that
Speaker 5: guy since I was in high school. Right, It's all
Speaker 5: about make America great again, Ronald Reagan. And where did
Speaker 5: Trump make his quote unquote money to the send he did?
Speaker 5: It was all the nineteen eighties. And he knows that
Speaker 5: Americans are always about the future, and so he's trying
Speaker 5: to glob On to Elon, because Elon's about the future
Speaker 5: in terms of the technology, and I think what the.
Speaker 9: Craits have to say is we get the future.
Speaker 5: We understand what future economic prosperity and stability looks like.
Speaker 5: It's not just giving tax cuts and deregulation where the
Speaker 5: wealth's going to pile up in Silicon Valley. We've got
Speaker 5: to actually make this technology economy work for small towns,
Speaker 5: for de industrialized com unities, for the working class that's
Speaker 5: been left out. We've got to have a tax on billionaires.
Speaker 5: We've got to tax the uber wealthy to provide healthcare
Speaker 5: and education, and that's how we're going to go into
Speaker 5: the future.
Speaker 9: But my view.
Speaker 5: Is that instead of just reflexively criticizing everything about these
Speaker 5: tech guys, what we need to say is we're the
Speaker 5: party of the future, and we want technology to work
Speaker 5: for everyone, not just for these billionaires.
Speaker 2: Well, Commerce, and thank you so much for taking all
Speaker 2: the time out of your holidays schedule and letting us
Speaker 2: in your home there where your adorable kids are. And
Speaker 2: we're always grateful for your time and your insights, especially
Speaker 2: on those issues.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much, appreciate you.
Speaker 4: It's our good pleasure. Have you a year?
Speaker 10: Ye?
Speaker 9: Happy? Here?
Speaker 3: Donald Trump has actually asked the Supreme Court to delay
Speaker 3: the TikTok sale deadline. I'm going to share a tear
Speaker 3: sheet so everyone can just see a little bit more
Speaker 3: about what's going on here. This is very significant. We've
Speaker 3: covered obviously Donald Trump and TikTok a lot on the
Speaker 3: show because there's a lot going on with it. Meaning
Speaker 3: Donald Trump seems to have been persuaded by one of
Speaker 3: his biggest donors, Jeffery Yass, who has a significant steak
Speaker 3: in TikTok. I believe he has a majority steak in
Speaker 3: TikTok to sort of change the hawkish anti China position
Speaker 3: that a lot of Republicans, if not most Republicans took
Speaker 3: on TikTok, And now Donald Trump has actually they're set
Speaker 3: to hear arguments on January tenth. The band was set
Speaker 3: to go in place on January nineteenth, still is set
Speaker 3: to go into place on January nineteenth, but has actually
Speaker 3: the Trump Trump's Dominie to b Solicitor General essentially filed
Speaker 3: an amikus brief that asked for a stay that would
Speaker 3: delay the deadline so that Donald Trump could come in
Speaker 3: and quote work out a negotiated resolution, as you can
Speaker 3: see in the ABC News article there. So again it's
Speaker 3: not a huge surprise, Crystal, but another significant, a significant
Speaker 3: I would say, obstacle potentially being removed with the help
Speaker 3: of Donald Trump for TikTok. TikTok is desperate for this
Speaker 3: not to happen. They badly do not want to sell
Speaker 3: Byte Dance. Obviously, the Beijing based parent company of TikTok
Speaker 3: does not want to sell the company, even though it
Speaker 3: seems like there would be monetarily a deal that would
Speaker 3: work out pretty well for Byte Dance, given you know
Speaker 3: that isn't to say TikTok is a huge property obviously,
Speaker 3: I don't need to explain that to everybody. But in
Speaker 3: terms of like investment and future value, I can understand
Speaker 3: why Bye Dance would want to sell cultural questions of
Speaker 3: control aside. So this is again Donald Trump putting his
Speaker 3: finger on the scale of it, Crystal, which sets up
Speaker 3: an interesting realignment question because if we share this next tab,
Speaker 3: you now also have the TikTok Gaza discourse that has
Speaker 3: been going on. But this is THEO Vaughn waiting into that.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's talked about this before. Actually as well.
Speaker 3: But here's THEO vonn talking about that.
Speaker 10: They don't want people sharing the truth about the genocide
Speaker 10: in Palestine, and that's why that they're doing it. I
Speaker 10: believe that that's what it is. And TikTok is one
Speaker 10: of those places where people can still do that and
Speaker 10: they want to own it. They want to own it, dude. Suppressing, Yes, suppressing,
Speaker 10: Thank you so much? Yes, And I think, uh yeah,
Speaker 10: I mean, and people say thank you, and and people
Speaker 10: say like, well, we don't want China have our information.
Speaker 4: All these every they all have.
Speaker 3: What are they I don't.
Speaker 10: Understand and know what what that means? You know, like,
Speaker 10: what do you have my information? I have like six
Speaker 10: pieces of information. There's no way you don't have them.
Speaker 3: So, uh, Crystal, what he's getting at is something. So
Speaker 3: that is important to understand about Donald Trump. And we'll
Speaker 3: get to ultimately what may happen to TikTok. This the
Speaker 3: New York Times article how Donald Trump went from backing
Speaker 3: a TikTok ban to backing off. Well, one of the
Speaker 3: reasons a lot of people in Trump's circles still want
Speaker 3: a TikTok ban, in fact, is as theovon I think
Speaker 3: was just getting it. They've seen the surveys of TikTok
Speaker 3: content and the breakdowns of it being much more pro
Speaker 3: Gaza sentiment than pro Israel sentiment, and there's this sense
Speaker 3: that control is being lost or that you know, China
Speaker 3: is manipulating young people rather than hey, there are some
Speaker 3: organic sentiments in this direction. Is actually the same thing
Speaker 3: with the Osama bin Laden letter when that it didn't
Speaker 3: actually go viral on tiktokh and yes, Charlie had a
Speaker 3: decent breakdown and the Washington Post had a great report
Speaker 3: on how it didn't actually go out. But the point
Speaker 3: remains that there are sort of organic there is a
Speaker 3: deeply organic pessimism out American imperialism and American power. It's
Speaker 3: a doctor's place where people hash that out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's that's really true.
Speaker 2: I think the point that Ryan has been making is
Speaker 2: the correct one, which is like Israel has gotten away
Speaker 2: with it, like we're going to cover that they just
Speaker 2: destroyed the last hospital in Gaza. Donald Trump has won
Speaker 2: the election. You know, one of the other oligarchs who
Speaker 2: backed him massively is Maria Maddison, the widow of Sheldon Maddilson.
Speaker 2: To the tune of some one hundred million dollars plus,
Speaker 2: she's basically bought the foreign policy. Israel's going to get
Speaker 2: whatever they want, whether people on TikTok are upset or not,
Speaker 2: so that risk has sort of faded. Meanwhile, Donald Trump
Speaker 2: himself personally has gotten very popular on TikTok, and you know,
Speaker 2: with him, it's all about his ego and like he
Speaker 2: feels like this platform is nice to him now, so
Speaker 2: that also changes his view. And then you coupled to
Speaker 2: that the jeff Yass, the amount of money that jeff
Speaker 2: Yass gave into his campaign, and it's very clear where
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has decided that his lie. Now I happen
Speaker 2: to agree with them. I think it'd be preposterous to
Speaker 2: ban TikTok. I think it'd be incredibly you know, damaging
Speaker 2: to many creators who you know, created an entire careers
Speaker 2: off of the platform, the many young people who love
Speaker 2: TikTok and get a lot out of it and find
Speaker 2: it to be a fantastic creative outlet. And to me,
Speaker 2: the arguments were always kind of silly because it's like
Speaker 2: number one, are you're, oh, we're worried about the data.
Speaker 2: I mean, theovonn talked about this too. It's like, what
Speaker 2: you think Mark Zuckerbarrock and all these other tech oligars
Speaker 2: don't already have your data, like everything that China would
Speaker 2: want to know about you. If they want to find
Speaker 2: it out, they already can. So that was always a
Speaker 2: little bit silly to me. And now the you know,
Speaker 2: the self interest has lined up in a very different
Speaker 2: direction for Trump, So I doubt that the TikTok pan
Speaker 2: is going to go into effect. They in the in
Speaker 2: the brief, they didn't actually weigh in on the core
Speaker 2: of the legal challenge, which you're on the First Amendment.
Speaker 2: They just said, like, Donald Trump's a fantastic negotiator and
Speaker 2: he's going to work this out when he gets into office,
Speaker 2: so just don't you worry about it.
Speaker 4: Just push this off a little bit.
Speaker 2: But I think that's also reasonable to say, you know,
Speaker 2: he was democratically elected and he's got a view on
Speaker 2: the issue, and he's going to have control of both
Speaker 2: the House and the Senate, and so it seems reasonable
Speaker 2: to imagine that he could potentially work out a deal
Speaker 2: here and not have to go through the Supreme Court process.
Speaker 2: But you know, curious for your thoughts on this, going
Speaker 2: back to the conversation we were having previously about Elon
Speaker 2: is like kind of buried in the whole pre holiday
Speaker 2: fuss over the government funding bill that Elon ultimately tanks
Speaker 2: and then they you know, strike this new deal, et cetera.
Speaker 2: One of the things that got pulled from the original
Speaker 2: deal with some restrictions on tech investment in China, which
Speaker 2: was a major priority for Elon because he wants to
Speaker 2: do this like Ai Tesla investment, you know, Chinese investment thing,
Speaker 2: and so this was important for him. Lo and behold
Speaker 2: that gets pulled out, and when that gets pulled out
Speaker 2: of the deal, suddenly.
Speaker 4: He's aokay with it.
Speaker 2: You also have Trump's previous hawkishness towards China is what
Speaker 2: led him to be in favor of a TikTok ban.
Speaker 2: Obviously he's changed his mind there. And you know, for Elon,
Speaker 2: much of his fortune is tied up in China, I mean,
Speaker 2: his investments in China. So the fact that he has
Speaker 2: so much influence in this administration leads me to believe
Speaker 2: you probably are going to get a very different orientation
Speaker 2: visa of e China in this Trump administration that you
Speaker 2: did in the last Trump administration. There's also a possibility
Speaker 2: with Trump, like he's old, you know, he's old, he's tired,
Speaker 2: he wants to play golf, that he's kind of happy
Speaker 2: to just hand off a lot of the heavy lifting
Speaker 2: and policy making decisions to his like band of oligarchs
Speaker 2: that funded his election. He gets to stay on in prison,
Speaker 2: he gets out of his legal jeopardy, he gets to
Speaker 2: have the pub the circumstance of being in the White
Speaker 2: House and you know, do the things that he wants
Speaker 2: to do. But also he gets to just kind of,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, pieces he doesn't really care about anymore,
Speaker 2: and not having to run for reelection, he can just
Speaker 2: handoff to his team of oligarchs.
Speaker 3: This is another one of those fascinating topics because it
Speaker 3: brings together so many of the different threads of the
Speaker 3: Trump era in that you have again Trump's own oligarchs
Speaker 3: like being pitted against one another. So the Miriam Adelson
Speaker 3: versus the Jeff Yeah. So you have the China hawks
Speaker 3: versus the sort of new right foreign policy, which is
Speaker 3: actually often very hawkish on China. But in a weird way,
Speaker 3: this could be good if it sort of is a
Speaker 3: counterbalance to some hawks in the incoming Trump administration, somebody,
Speaker 3: for example, like Secretary of State, incoming Secretary of State
Speaker 3: nominee Marco Rubio, who is extremely hawkish on China in
Speaker 3: a weird way. If you have like Elon who wants
Speaker 3: to be more protective of his own business interests, Tesla
Speaker 3: is a good example in China as a counterballance to
Speaker 3: like be hawkish and enough that we end up in
Speaker 3: a war because of escalator rhetoric or whatever. Maybe that's
Speaker 3: a good thing, remains to be seen, but it's just
Speaker 3: it's very hard to know what Trump policy will look
Speaker 3: like because we've seen on things like TikTok, for example,
Speaker 3: him just be so open. The most charitable way to
Speaker 3: put it is like open minded to and open to
Speaker 3: different arguments. But I think what happened with Yas was
Speaker 3: openly transactional in an unusually brazen sense. To get back
Speaker 3: to what we were kind of talking about earlier Crystal
Speaker 3: with Jimmy Carter. So let's listen to Donald Trump the
Speaker 3: way that he's talked about TikTok more recently, which is
Speaker 3: very different than how he had obviously talked about it before.
Speaker 3: This is Trump actually before the election talking about how
Speaker 3: if you want to save TikTok, you have to vote
Speaker 3: Donald Trump for.
Speaker 11: All of those that want to save TikTok in America.
Speaker 9: Talk closing it up.
Speaker 11: But I'm now a big star onok. You have TikTok
Speaker 11: jack and we're setting records. You're not to want anything
Speaker 11: with TikTok. The other side's going to close it up.
Speaker 11: So if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump.
Speaker 11: If you don't care about TikTok and other things like safety,
Speaker 11: security and prosperity, then you can vote for a Marxist
Speaker 11: who's going to destroy our country.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 4: That's the pitch.
Speaker 3: It's pretty clear. It's pretty clear. It's so funny on
Speaker 3: so many different levels there. But you can see crystal
Speaker 3: that as soon as he realized that he could have
Speaker 3: some control over the platform, it's not just about Jeff. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's about people liking Donald Trump on the platform. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's campaign itself being able to find success on
Speaker 3: the platform. I've actually always disagreed on this. I've always
Speaker 3: been in favor of a TikTok ban, and I think
Speaker 3: that it's different. I don't support this ban. I think
Speaker 3: this is the way that all of the legislation at
Speaker 3: band TikTok was written is insane, not surprising, but insane
Speaker 3: in not a narrow way. Obviously sort of power grab.
Speaker 3: They were all written to be power grabs rather than
Speaker 3: actually I deal with the problem. So that was always suspect.
Speaker 3: But in a sense then Donald Trump coming in and saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm doing great on TikTok, let's save it.
Speaker 4: It kind of worked. He did well with young people.
Speaker 4: It might have I don't know with young people.
Speaker 3: I don't know that the brief is going to be
Speaker 3: successful that they filed because we're talking about a piece
Speaker 3: of legislation that was democratically, that was that was passed
Speaker 3: through our system to the extent that it is a
Speaker 3: democratic it was passed through Congress, lamed by the president.
Speaker 3: So I don't know that they'll they'll have much room
Speaker 3: here with the Supreme Court. But even how the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court this or Trump era Supreme Court is going to
Speaker 3: decide on this is an interesting question because you have
Speaker 3: sort of more libertarian leaners like a Neil Gorsich or
Speaker 3: anymy Cony Barrett, and then you have people like Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 3: and oh, I would say potentially Sam Alito, who will
Speaker 3: go probably in a different direction, but we don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, to me, it's reasonable to say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm just coming into office, like just delay thinking about this,
Speaker 2: delay weighing this decision, and let me see if I
Speaker 2: can work something out. I could see them being amenable
Speaker 2: to that ultimately. And I've been dug deeply or at
Speaker 2: least not for a while into what the legal case is.
Speaker 2: But I think it's effectively TikTok is saying that the
Speaker 2: bill is a is a violation of free speech rights. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's that's the case that they're making. Which yeah,
Speaker 2: I would think that the more libertarian oriented part of
Speaker 2: parts of the court may be amenable too, and also
Speaker 2: the more like pro corporate sides of the court. But
Speaker 2: I personally I can't imagine TikTok actually being banned at
Speaker 2: this point. Like, no, it is hard for me to imagine. So,
Speaker 2: whether you know one way or another, I feel like
Speaker 2: it's kind of likely the Supreme Court is going to say,
Speaker 2: all right, we'll just delay it and let you work
Speaker 2: it out, and then Trump will figure something out because
Speaker 2: this is an important priority for one of his donors.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 3: Well, and also, Trump friendly holigarchs have been lining up
Speaker 3: to buy TikTok and like have been lining up investors
Speaker 3: obviously to make a deal that's sort of too good
Speaker 3: for Byte Dance to turn down if it ends up
Speaker 3: that they are not successful at the Supreme Court. So
Speaker 3: whether you still have the sort of Beijing based algorithmic
Speaker 3: magic that they feel they have with TikTok right now
Speaker 3: if it is sold is a totally open question. I
Speaker 3: think Byte Dance doesn't do itself many favors by saying,
Speaker 3: you know, on the one hand, we absolutely need to
Speaker 3: be owned by TikTok needs to be owned by byte
Speaker 3: Dance in order to be as good as it is,
Speaker 3: which means like, Okay, I guess I'm curious what you're
Speaker 3: doing with all of that data over there. But on
Speaker 3: the other hand, you know, what does that look like
Speaker 3: in terms of significant disruptions to the platform that everybody knows.
Speaker 3: I kind of doubt it would be as as significant
Speaker 3: as the people who want to maintain control of TikTok
Speaker 3: with by Dance say that it will be again because
Speaker 3: it's a very successful product and it's it's I mean,
Speaker 3: if you if you buy TikTok you're going to have
Speaker 3: a huge interest in keeping it successful, making it more successful,
Speaker 3: making it more addictive, is what it means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's that's that's the truth of the matter.
Speaker 2: To bring it back to vivecant Elon in that whole
Speaker 2: fight is we need. What we really need is less
Speaker 2: TikTok and more sleep overs and more hanging out.
Speaker 3: Less x less social media. I mean, it's just such
Speaker 3: an insane argument from the people who literally own the
Speaker 3: social media platforms.
Speaker 4: But very true, very true.
Speaker 2: So we didn't want to lose sight of the latest
Speaker 2: in terms of the idf onslaught in Gaza, they have
Speaker 2: now officially rated and evacuated and detained many patients from
Speaker 2: the last functioning hospital in northern Gazas called Kamal Adwan.
Speaker 2: Reports are some two hundred and forty Palestinians, including dozens
Speaker 2: of medical staff, were detained from the hospital, and that's
Speaker 2: to include the director of the hospital, doctor Hassam Abu Safia,
Speaker 2: who some have said are being held and tortured by
Speaker 2: the idea of his family. Is deeply concerned and this
Speaker 2: comes as you know, they've they've instituted this plan where
Speaker 2: they've effectively sealed off northern Gaza and are just you know,
Speaker 2: starving and obliterating everything in sight. And we have some
Speaker 2: images we can share with you here just to give
Speaker 2: you a sense of the level of devastation. This is
Speaker 2: that hospital director, doctor Assam Abu Safia, who you know,
Speaker 2: exited the hospital and is approaching these tanks, and I
Speaker 2: believe this the last that that he had been seeing.
Speaker 2: You can see just the incredible amount of rubble and
Speaker 2: also incredible amount of courage. People are commenting on him
Speaker 2: walking through this landscape and approaching these tanks outside of
Speaker 2: the hospital. I can show you a little bit of
Speaker 2: the imagery of the patients being expelled from the hospital here.
Speaker 2: This is doctors and patients. You can see on the screen.
Speaker 2: Many of the men were ultimately forced to strip down.
Speaker 2: The weather is you know, quite chilly now. In fact,
Speaker 2: we've had reports of a number of infants who have
Speaker 2: died at this point because of hypothermia and the freezing temperatures,
Speaker 2: who are already born, likely malnourished because their mothers are
Speaker 2: unable to get sufficient caloric intake while they're pregnant, and
Speaker 2: then they're unable to breastfeed, you know, sufficiently if at
Speaker 2: all because of the lack of lack of nutrition, and
Speaker 2: the situation is the most dire in northern Gaza. This
Speaker 2: is an image of that hospital on fire. And again
Speaker 2: this was really the last functioning hospital in Northern Gaza.
Speaker 2: I saw that these patients were moved to another hospital,
Speaker 2: but that hospital has been condemned because it also had
Speaker 2: been so severely damaged. So no telling where they're going
Speaker 2: to head to next. And then let me just show
Speaker 2: you this next one. These are a number of additional
Speaker 2: photos from the people who were removed and many of
Speaker 2: them detained. You can see them exiting the hospital. Also
Speaker 2: just I mean, just look at this landscape, like there
Speaker 2: is just just nothing left. You can see them here
Speaker 2: crowded together and forced. This is the men forced to
Speaker 2: strip down to their underwear and their hands bound and
Speaker 2: here you see them kneeling and blindfolded on the ground.
Speaker 2: So you know, just really horrific images and horrific situation
Speaker 2: that is coming out there, and you know, it's easy
Speaker 2: to forget Emily that just over a year ago, when
Speaker 2: the attack, plans were being made for Al Shifa to
Speaker 2: raid Al Shifa Hospital. There was a whole propaganda effort
Speaker 2: to convince the world that this was legitimate. That you know,
Speaker 2: they said there was this Tamas layer underground, and they
Speaker 2: created this whole three D imagery around what they would
Speaker 2: find there. Of course, they didn't find any of that there.
Speaker 2: They claimed to find some tunnels, and I think there
Speaker 2: was some alleged cache of weapons that they found but
Speaker 2: or claimed to find, but nothing close to what they
Speaker 2: had purported to say existed underneath of this hospital complex.
Speaker 2: Now here we are more than a year later, and
Speaker 2: this barely gets a mention in the news. The entire
Speaker 2: healthcare system has basically been destroyed in northern Gaza. The
Speaker 2: entire healthcare system has been destroyed, and I feel like
Speaker 2: there's kind of no going back, not just with regard
Speaker 2: to Israel, but with regard to the world. When you
Speaker 2: watch all of this unfold and it's just allowed to happen,
Speaker 2: I think, is this these atrocities and this you know
Speaker 2: what the worldwide consensus has basically arrived at that this
Speaker 2: is a genocide. This is unfolded in front of all
Speaker 2: of our eyes. No power with the ability to intervene
Speaker 2: has decided to intervene, and so it kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: opens up a new era of brutality and might makes
Speaker 2: right that you know, maybe you say that's always been
Speaker 2: the law, but there was at least some semblance of
Speaker 2: we have these international rules and countries are going to
Speaker 2: be somewhat constrained.
Speaker 4: I think all the shackles are off.
Speaker 2: I think that there's going to be sort of unchecked
Speaker 2: barbarism in the future based on what Israel has been
Speaker 2: able to get away with here with very little repercussions.
Speaker 3: And I imagine you read the New York Times report
Speaker 3: just what was this was right before Christmas? Wasn't it
Speaker 3: like the day before Christmas? About how this was based
Speaker 3: on conversations with internal IDF sources about how the standards
Speaker 3: were consciously lowered about civilian casualties, like basically the ratio
Speaker 3: of likely civilian casualties to combatant casualties, and how this
Speaker 3: was a conscious decision that was made internally formally by
Speaker 3: particular military leaders at different times that changed what we
Speaker 3: have sort of been told over and over again were
Speaker 3: the very high standards and previous conflicts that the IDF,
Speaker 3: as their defenders say, held to and so crystal. I
Speaker 3: think that does raise an interesting question of precedent about this,
Speaker 3: or of justification, because I was curious when I was
Speaker 3: reading that article about how it would be defended by
Speaker 3: the people who have said over and over again that
Speaker 3: the other ratios were the defensible ratios and were the
Speaker 3: sort of best in the world. And so I mean,
Speaker 3: it's also if Donald Trump comes in, and if right
Speaker 3: now what is happening with Netsan Yahou and Biden, is
Speaker 3: that you know, there's we don't have a president with
Speaker 3: the mental faculties to even be negotiating something like a ceasefire,
Speaker 3: given that we are the backer of this conflict, of
Speaker 3: the primary backer of this conflict, that as Israel said
Speaker 3: that this conflict couldn't be waged without American military support.
Speaker 3: So if that is the case and we're in this
Speaker 3: interim period between Netahuo maybe hoping to have a ceasefire
Speaker 3: deal with the back of Donald Trump, that looks differently
Speaker 3: than it would under Biden. It also sheds light on
Speaker 3: how those delays have enormous human costs. Right. It's it's
Speaker 3: if you're delaying it for the sake of politics, what
Speaker 3: happens in the interim is real, and people die and
Speaker 3: it ends people's lives. And that's so that I've been
Speaker 3: thinking about as I've seen these images coming as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, there's no doubt about it. And you know,
Speaker 2: the it has rendered human life so cheap too, you know,
Speaker 2: the number of people killed and just the amount of
Speaker 2: pain and suffering and destructure of every sort of civilian
Speaker 2: infrastructure like it just it has rendered human life really cheap.
Speaker 2: And that has implications that you know, go far beyond
Speaker 2: Gaza and you know, spillover effects that will impact, you know,
Speaker 2: the way the level of barbarism that people tolerate, that
Speaker 2: people think is normal, that nations think that they can
Speaker 2: get away with. And you know, at this point, previously
Speaker 2: there was some possibility that because most of the upset
Speaker 2: over is the Israeli genocide and Gaza was coming from
Speaker 2: the left, which is part of the Democratic Coalition, that
Speaker 2: there could be enough political pressure brought to bear on
Speaker 2: the Biden Harris administration to force some sort of change
Speaker 2: in policy. Like that was an ongoing question. You saw
Speaker 2: at times, you know, he would sort of bend to
Speaker 2: pressure with Hell's withhold this weapons shipment, Kamala. Harris would
Speaker 2: make some comments that seem to at least value Palestinian life,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So it was like an ongoing possibility. And
Speaker 2: you know, with Kamala losing and with Trump being totally
Speaker 2: like committed to whatever Miriam Medlicine and Israel wants him
Speaker 2: to do based on his first German office and based
Speaker 2: on also how he's positioned himself this time around, that's over.
Speaker 2: Like Trump doesn't care what left he's on TikTok have
Speaker 2: to say about any of this. Trump doesn't care what
Speaker 2: students camp down on a college campus have to say
Speaker 2: about any of this. So, you know, I hate to
Speaker 2: be hate to be so pessimistic, but when you look
Speaker 2: at that landscape of just nothing but rubble, death and destruction,
Speaker 2: it's like it's over. Like Israel gets to do what
Speaker 2: Israel wants to do. No one is going to check them.
Speaker 2: Their story is coming out that the dogs in Gaza,
Speaker 2: which at one point we're starving to death, are now
Speaker 2: fat and bloated from the number of corpses, human corpses
Speaker 2: that they've been feasting on. Like that's where we are,
Speaker 2: and we all watched as it happened, and our government
Speaker 2: actively was like, yes, we support.
Speaker 4: This, We're going to ship bombs for it.
Speaker 2: Both parties effectively agreed with very few dissenters to your
Speaker 2: point about the New York Times article, Emily, so that
Speaker 2: reporting that the New York Times now finally has gotten
Speaker 2: around to doing nine seven to two magazine, which is
Speaker 2: Israeli publication. It was probably right about a year ago broke.
Speaker 4: Down their report that revealed all of.
Speaker 2: These things, from the AI targeting system to the fact
Speaker 2: that you know, they decided, oh, we can target low
Speaker 2: level HAMAS operatives even when they're at home with their families,
Speaker 2: which is something that you know, most like no other
Speaker 2: Western developed society would be willing to do. Like imagine,
Speaker 2: if you know, imagine if a foreign power was targeting
Speaker 2: our like low level soldiers when they're just like at
Speaker 2: home with their kids, and think about how that would
Speaker 2: be received, or think about how be received if Hamas
Speaker 2: was attacking you know, not that they would be morally
Speaker 2: above this, but if they attacked IDF soldiers when they
Speaker 2: were at home just with their kids and their wife,
Speaker 2: how that would be viewed. And they made that official
Speaker 2: policy in it right, Yeah, And that's that's true. And
Speaker 2: in addition to increasing the number of acceptable civilian debts
Speaker 2: and even that number they would push up to like well,
Speaker 2: actually it's Okay, if two hundred civilians are killed in
Speaker 2: this attack for someone that we particularly want, all of
Speaker 2: this reporting had been done already. It's just that the
Speaker 2: mainstream press didn't find it like convenient at the moment
Speaker 2: to admit it. And actually, and I can can show
Speaker 2: you this. One of the authors, one of the journalists
Speaker 2: who was on this byline, had previously gotten asked about
Speaker 2: that nine seven to two reporting, and Ryan shared this,
Speaker 2: So he says, Bergmann is on the byline confirming that
Speaker 2: reporting on the idf using AI to target entire families.
Speaker 2: Yet here he is when it mattered, dismissing the reporting
Speaker 2: as mere fantasy. The New York Times international embarrassment. So
Speaker 2: this is the journalist who's you know, is on the
Speaker 2: byline now confirming this reporting that at one point he
Speaker 2: mocked and compared it to a Netflix show. Just take
Speaker 2: a listen to this.
Speaker 7: You know, sometimes people come to be you know, for
Speaker 7: sources and stories, and I think about the stories that
Speaker 7: they are too bad to be true. They sound go
Speaker 7: like Netflix episode, And something.
Speaker 2: Happened more like a Netflix episode than something that happens
Speaker 2: in reality. That's what he was saying about the nine
Speaker 2: seven and two reporting. That he has now confirmed. And
Speaker 2: Ryan's point that you know, it doesn't really matter anymore
Speaker 2: at this point, like it's over, it's done, is a
Speaker 2: really important one. So now in your times, feels comfortable
Speaker 2: reporting the reality of the situation when there's no possibility
Speaker 2: of any pressure changing and when so many lives and
Speaker 2: so much destruction has already been wrought.
Speaker 3: You know, we're true of every conflict, but we're going
Speaker 3: to keep learning more and more about what's transpired over
Speaker 3: the course of the last year in Gaza for years
Speaker 3: to come. And to your point, it's there are tiktoks,
Speaker 3: like there's organic evidence of a lot of this that
Speaker 3: it doesn't quite get picked up, and so that's where
Speaker 3: there's kind of a disconnect between media and the public.
Speaker 2: So I want to be fair here to the Israeli side.
Speaker 2: You know, of course they can claim this was some
Speaker 2: sort of a Humas stronghold, and this is the you know,
Speaker 2: cash of quote unquote weapons that they claim they found
Speaker 2: in kamal Od one, the hospital that they just attacked.
Speaker 2: We've got two pistols, a monocular, a compass, a dagger,
Speaker 2: some money, and a fanny pack. So that's what they
Speaker 2: even by their own by their own statements. That's what
Speaker 2: they're using to justify this. So there you go. Reaction
Speaker 2: and response continues to roll in in the wake of
Speaker 2: the murder of Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the latest
Speaker 2: to offer a take is Tim Dillon, who, as part
Speaker 2: of a Netflix roast, actually dressed up as the ghost
Speaker 2: of Brian Thompson and had quite a quite a bit
Speaker 2: that he leaned into. Here, let me go ahead and
Speaker 2: show you a little bit of what he had to say.
Speaker 10: Is this what you want?
Speaker 5: Laughing?
Speaker 9: Here's a free medicine. Here you go, that's fed at all,
Speaker 9: not as much as you want.
Speaker 12: It's fed at all, laced with more fan at all.
Speaker 12: I'm Brian Thompson. I'm going to hell for this. You
Speaker 12: might as well laugh.
Speaker 2: I go in to hell for this, you might as
Speaker 2: well laugh. Here were some other of the things that
Speaker 2: he said, Emily, I just pull up the New York Post.
Speaker 2: Comedian Tim Dillon appeared as the ghost of slain United
Speaker 2: Healthcare's THEEO, Brian Thompson in Netflix's Torching twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: a roast of the year, on Friday, less than a
Speaker 2: month after the executive was gunned down. They talk about
Speaker 2: how he was dressed, similar to the way that Thompson
Speaker 2: was don ghoulish gray makeup. Was met with a mixture
Speaker 2: of nervous laughter and cheers. He introduced himself and had
Speaker 2: a sign that read United Hellcare CEO. Addressed the elephant
Speaker 2: in the room, saying, as Thompson that he's been in hell,
Speaker 2: reading the tweets that a lot of people are happy
Speaker 2: he's dead. Quote, your reaction to my murder makes me sick,
Speaker 2: and not the type of sick I would immediately deny
Speaker 2: for not having the proper paperwork, the comedian said, taking
Speaker 2: a job at United Healthcare's track record of denying its
Speaker 2: policies members, So there you go. Tim Dillon weigh in
Speaker 2: with his take, Emily, did you see a lot of
Speaker 2: pearl clutching over this or people will just sort of
Speaker 2: like accept it At this point, No, I.
Speaker 3: Actually looked because as we were prepping the show, I
Speaker 3: was assumed that this would have elicited some of the
Speaker 3: pearl clutching that we saw earlier. And I'm not saying
Speaker 3: all that is unreasonable, but there really wasn't any. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was because it was the holiday break,
Speaker 3: but or if it's actually because of the poll that
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about, and this was sort of
Speaker 3: increasingly clear that to the Tim Dillons of the world
Speaker 3: sort of do of their fingers more firmly on the pulse.
Speaker 2: That probably is that there was an effort to make
Speaker 2: it seem like this reaction to Brian Thompson's murder was
Speaker 2: just some like far left, you know, ghoulish reaction, but
Speaker 2: poles like this tell you that was pretty widespread. Sixty
Speaker 2: nine percent of Americans say that health insurance claimed denials
Speaker 2: had a great deal or a moderate amount of responsibility
Speaker 2: for the killing of CEO Brian Thompson, according to a
Speaker 2: new poll. If you go down the list here too,
Speaker 2: you've got sixty seven percent saying that profits made by
Speaker 2: health insurance companies had a great deal or a moderate
Speaker 2: amount to do with it wealth or income in general.
Speaker 2: You have a majority of view. And then this was
Speaker 2: kind of crazy to me if you look at this
Speaker 2: bottom number. So they say, okay, but how about the
Speaker 2: dude who actually killed him, And obviously seventy eight percent
Speaker 2: of people are like, yeah, I mean that probably had
Speaker 2: something to do with it. Like this actual man who
Speaker 2: was a murderer. But it was astonishing to me that
Speaker 2: you had twenty eighty percent of people who said that
Speaker 2: the literal guy who killed him had only a little
Speaker 2: or nothing at all to do with the murder. Like
Speaker 2: that part is actually that is actually crazy to me.
Speaker 3: Granted, you can get twenty percent of Americans to say
Speaker 3: just about anything, but only sixty three percent when we
Speaker 3: were looking at that, said that he is like bearing
Speaker 3: the full responsibility, which means people have very mixed opinions.
Speaker 3: Like that sixty three percent number to me is even
Speaker 3: more significant, Like it's a majority, yes, but it's it's
Speaker 3: not like a commanding majority. It's like people are pretty
Speaker 3: have pretty mixed emotions about what happened. And so I
Speaker 3: think Chris might be right that the immediate freak out
Speaker 3: over sort of the dirt bag left, right, Like, this
Speaker 3: is just the dirt bag Left, and they're they're just
Speaker 3: such dirt bags, they're such losers, and they're just they're trolling,
Speaker 3: and we're going to have this moral panic over how
Speaker 3: awful is that they're trolling. Really, I think has become
Speaker 3: clear was missing the boat was not the right argument
Speaker 3: to be making. Is like, if you want to actually
Speaker 3: convince people or persuade people to have a different approach
Speaker 3: to what happened to Brian Thompson. If you want to
Speaker 3: actually say, you know this was you can't be like
Speaker 3: ironically worshiping Luigi with the prayer candles and the memes.
Speaker 3: Probably there's a different argument line of argument that you
Speaker 3: want to be making. Then you're all disgusting idiots because
Speaker 3: it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people.
Speaker 2: No, that's exactly right, And you know, just to like
Speaker 2: a lot of these polls, it depends a lot on
Speaker 2: how you ask the question blah blah blah. And to
Speaker 2: say that the claim denial rate had something to do
Speaker 2: with the murder is different than saying, like, the murder
Speaker 2: was good and I'm glad that he was murdered, right,
Speaker 2: that's Those are two wildly different things, and I think
Speaker 2: there's been an effort to conflate those two things and
Speaker 2: basically say, if you want to even use this as
Speaker 2: an opportunity to talk about the cruelty, sickness, death, bankruptcy
Speaker 2: that results from our healthcare system, then you're basically celebrating murder.
Speaker 2: I think there's been a real effort to complate those
Speaker 2: two sentiments of like, yeah, this is a disgusting system.
Speaker 2: This was a person who was, you know, at the
Speaker 2: head of one of the most notoriously like evil healthcare companies,
Speaker 2: and we think that that is wrong. In addition to
Speaker 2: thinking that murdering someone you know, uh, on the street
Speaker 2: in New York is wrong. That is the piece that
Speaker 2: has been sort of willfully ignored. And Ken Clipenstein has
Speaker 2: been doing a really fantastic.
Speaker 4: Job reporting speaking of the dirt bag left see yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean Ken just is he has the biggest balls
Speaker 2: of anyone I think I've ever seen. Like I'm sure
Speaker 2: the local FBI agent where he is in him are
Speaker 2: on like a first name basis. But in any case,
Speaker 2: Ken's done really good reporting too on what's going on
Speaker 2: internally at United Health Group. He's been doing great report
Speaker 2: about the security state's response to this murder. And there's
Speaker 2: a lot of very troubling indications that they're going to
Speaker 2: use things like, you know, maybe people posting the Saint
Speaker 2: Luigi Candle memes to label them as extremists, domestic extremists
Speaker 2: who should be you know, tracked and surveilled, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et CETERA very similar trajectory to you know, we saw
Speaker 2: after nine to eleven the use of our deep states,
Speaker 2: like security state agencies against American citizens, against people who
Speaker 2: were here legally, attempts to entrap them, et cetera. We've
Speaker 2: seen that targeting right wing extremists in the Trump era,
Speaker 2: you know, the Gretchen Whitmer plot, et cetera. And it
Speaker 2: is very plausible to me that this would be another
Speaker 2: excuse for further security state expansion to go against quote
Speaker 2: unquote anti capital extremists or anti capitalism extremists who may
Speaker 2: have expressed so like untoward sentiments about this murder and
Speaker 2: about Luigi Mangiote as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it will definitely be interesting to see how if
Speaker 3: like cash Battel is confirmed as director of the FBI,
Speaker 3: the incoming Trump administration handles this question as the Luigi
Speaker 3: stuff really isn't going away. It's it's going to obviously
Speaker 3: there's going to be a trial and it'll be in
Speaker 3: the news. So I'll be watching that closely for sure.
Speaker 3: Given all of the sort of realignment on Intel world,
Speaker 3: you know, conservatives now being more critical of Intel overreach.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm skeptical of this because I think
Speaker 2: they I don't think they care about intel overreach. I
Speaker 2: think they don't want their political side targeted. All right,
Speaker 2: So we've got some incredible Joe Biden news here. Emily
Speaker 2: Apparently he thinks he would have beat Donald Trump. So
Speaker 2: the Biden delusions have never stopped. This is amazing. So
Speaker 2: this I think was from a Washington Post profile of
Speaker 2: The Guardian wrote it up and reportedly, regrets ending his
Speaker 2: reelection campaign, says he would have defeated Trump. This is
Speaker 2: according to White House sources. They say they that he
Speaker 2: still thinks he would have won, even though there were
Speaker 2: negative pull indications. He also reportedly said he made a
Speaker 2: mistake in choosing me Garland as Attorney General because Garland
Speaker 2: was so slow to prosecute Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: That part is actually kind of true.
Speaker 2: But you know, we had talked about Jon Favreau revealed
Speaker 2: that Biden's own polsters had him losing four hundred Electoral
Speaker 2: College votes to Donald Trump, and yet he still thinks
Speaker 2: he would have been able to pull it off. Like
Speaker 2: I just I don't even know what to say to that.
Speaker 2: That is an incredible level of delusion that I cannot
Speaker 2: even wrap my head around.
Speaker 3: Although not surprising because he clung to the he clung
Speaker 3: to the nomination for weeks after he said we beat
Speaker 3: Medicare in a debate, among other gaffes that were just
Speaker 3: beyond embarrassing over the course of that night. So I
Speaker 3: have an unpopular opinion on this, which is that I
Speaker 3: think there's there's something to this. I think he's ultimately wrong.
Speaker 3: But what I do think is true, and this is
Speaker 3: one of the things I ended up getting wrong in
Speaker 3: the election of Row. But one of the things I
Speaker 3: do think is true is that the polarization is such
Speaker 3: that you can run generic R, generic D, even if
Speaker 3: they are literally the host of Celebrity Apprentice or like
Speaker 3: completely completely just out of their like out of their
Speaker 3: mind at this point, Joe Biden not in control of
Speaker 3: his own mental faculties, and you can still have a
Speaker 3: close election. So I don't think he could have won,
Speaker 3: but I think it would be closer than people realize.
Speaker 3: And but one of the things I got wrong in
Speaker 3: the election was I expected that we were we would
Speaker 3: still be like very polarized over the question of Trump,
Speaker 3: and we are to be fair like it was a
Speaker 3: it was a close election, but I do think some
Speaker 3: of the Trump stigma was gone and that's I agree,
Speaker 3: kind of pushed them over the edge. And that's what
Speaker 3: it's like hilarious that Biden is still like, hey, we
Speaker 3: could have had it if it weren't for Kamala, We
Speaker 3: just we could have We could have had it. So
Speaker 3: I think it's two things. Like one, I think it
Speaker 3: actually would have been surprisingly close, even with Biden on
Speaker 3: the ticket, and even with him thinking that he beat
Speaker 3: Medicare in some.
Speaker 4: Way disagree, disagree.
Speaker 2: I think the people were like, you cannot, you cannot
Speaker 2: be president for another four years, like you cannot be
Speaker 2: just on a human level, because to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: my lesson has been somewhat the opposite over the past
Speaker 2: decade of politics, eight years of politics, which is that
Speaker 2: you know, people do change their minds, Like these collitions
Speaker 2: have shifted a lot totally over the past number of years,
Speaker 2: and they're not just like the you know, partisan automatons
Speaker 2: that sometimes the pundits kind of paint the mass. So
Speaker 2: you know, when you see young people shifting, you see
Speaker 2: Latinos shifting, and you see college educated pooples shifting, and
Speaker 2: the Democrats whatever, you know, people are evaluating the situation.
Speaker 4: As it exists.
Speaker 2: And I think there were quite a lot who would
Speaker 2: have looked at because it wouldn't have been it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have stopped with the debate, and you know, we beat Medicare,
Speaker 2: Like there would have been eighteen more Joe Biden's brain
Speaker 2: is melting out of his ear moments during the campaign,
Speaker 2: and I think many more people would have just been like,
Speaker 2: we just we just can't do that. So we were
Speaker 2: seeing those polls that were like, oh, New Jersey's in play. Oh,
Speaker 2: New Mexico's in play. Oh, like Virginia. I think I
Speaker 2: think Trump would have probably won Virginia if it was
Speaker 2: Joe Biden still on the ticket. Not to mention that
Speaker 2: even though obviously Kama Harris was part of the Biden
Speaker 2: Harris administration, like it was really Joe Biden who was
Speaker 2: the face of supporting the Israeli genocide. And so I
Speaker 2: think you would have seen even more erosion among young
Speaker 2: voters because of their just horror at you know, what
Speaker 2: he had actively the policy he had actively pursued.
Speaker 3: Although if you are Joe Biden, you look at the
Speaker 3: exit polls and see her underperforming him with all of these,
Speaker 3: like in almost every demographic except for with the wealthy
Speaker 3: and so I see where he's coming from that like
Speaker 3: he's I don't know if this is actually where he's
Speaker 3: coming from, because I don't know how much he's able
Speaker 3: to actually significcess analyze all this. Yeah, exactly, But there
Speaker 3: also would have been kind of a weird kind of factual.
Speaker 3: There also would have been like media overdrive trying to
Speaker 3: again like take down Trump and whatever. But one of
Speaker 3: the things that I want to agree with in your
Speaker 3: point is, I think it's it's more polarization. It's not
Speaker 3: R and D polarization so much as it is like,
Speaker 3: I don't care if this man is the host of
Speaker 3: Celebrity Apprentice. I am not. I do not want Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton to be president, and so I will vote for
Speaker 3: this guy who's out there like saying the create like
Speaker 3: telling Robert Patten said to break up with Christian Stewart
Speaker 3: on Twitter because I don't want Hillary Clinton to be president.
Speaker 3: And what I underestimated or what I overestimated, was the
Speaker 3: extent to there was still that level of polarization against
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. And so it's still there. Obviously a lot
Speaker 3: of people who are like I'll vote for anybody but
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, but it's not as significant as it was
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen or whatever, and I think that's one
Speaker 3: of the things that media is grappling with right now.
Speaker 3: And what we learned from that big Wall Street Journal
Speaker 3: profile of Joe Biden that came out right before Christmas
Speaker 3: also is that he is being coddled from any negative media,
Speaker 3: that his aides are not passing any negative media onto him,
Speaker 3: which you know, there has been some. There has been
Speaker 3: as much as there should, but there has been some.
Speaker 3: And it probably speaks to this as well, Crystal, that
Speaker 3: you know, he's looking at where Kamala Harris underperformed her
Speaker 3: level of popularity and her talents as a politician, and
Speaker 3: it all seems so obvious now. Is one of the
Speaker 3: things that Ryan said before the election that has stuck
Speaker 3: with me. He said it like on election night. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you remember. This was like, as we
Speaker 3: were looking at everything, he was like, we're going to
Speaker 3: back on this and it was going to be one
Speaker 3: of those elections where it seems so obvious once we
Speaker 3: know it. Actually, Yeah, I feel like there's probably some
Speaker 3: of that in dem circles right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, very very true.
Speaker 2: It's also so that Wall Street Journal piece, which really
Speaker 2: was the first attempt to detail the cover up, which
Speaker 2: has to be one of the gravest political scandals of
Speaker 2: our time, just of Joe Biden's clear decline. You know,
Speaker 2: they have anecdotes there from the spring of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: so like this man had just been elected, and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: he has good days and bad days, and today's a
Speaker 2: bad days. So we can't have the meeting, Like what
Speaker 2: this is the president of the United States. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: you're on twenty four to seven. That's what the job is.
Speaker 2: And from the very beginning, his aids knew he was
Speaker 2: not up to the job, and that decline only accelerated
Speaker 2: over the course of his administration. And you know, if
Speaker 2: you're someone who wanted, like me, wanted to defeat Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: the fact that the people around him covered all this
Speaker 2: up allowed for there to be, you know, the cancelation
Speaker 2: of the Democratic primary, no ability for Democratic voters to
Speaker 2: get to weigh in on my ctis just arrived to
Speaker 2: get to weigh in on who they would like to
Speaker 2: see and who they thought would be the strongest contender.
Speaker 2: And you know, for them to have a chance too,
Speaker 2: to separate themselves from someone who ended up being a
Speaker 2: very unpopular president like was a This was a devastating
Speaker 2: decision that they made. And look, there are no guarantees
Speaker 2: whoever would have come out of that process would have
Speaker 2: had a tough battle on their hands against Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: but would have had a much better shot than just
Speaker 2: last minute putting in Kamala Harris, who was not a
Speaker 2: good politician and who you know, hadn't had to earn
Speaker 2: the votes to secure that nomination and so didn't have
Speaker 2: like a bought in established base, all of those things.
Speaker 2: It really is extraordinary. And then you know, so this
Speaker 2: was kind of interesting. Wanted to play this for everybody.
Speaker 2: There's a little bit of reflection of this happening in
Speaker 2: the news media where you have a journalist who says,
Speaker 2: you know, the biggest mistake, the most undercovered story was
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's decline, and the media really failed in not
Speaker 2: pushing on that. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8: One of the things we also do in the year
Speaker 8: end Correspondence round Table is dig into what was undercovered
Speaker 8: or under reported.
Speaker 13: Jan undercovered underreported that would be to me, Joe Biden's
Speaker 13: obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in.
Speaker 3: The televised at the presidential debate.
Speaker 13: With unquestioned and you know, it's starting to emerge now
Speaker 13: that his advisors kind of managed his limitations and reported
Speaker 13: in the Wall Street Journal for four years and yet
Speaker 13: he insisted that he could still run for president. We
Speaker 13: should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit
Speaker 13: for office for another four years, which could have led
Speaker 13: to a primary for the Democrats. It could have changed
Speaker 13: the scope of the entire election. Yet still, incredibly we
Speaker 13: read the Washington Post that his advisors are saying that
Speaker 13: he regrets that he dropped out of the race. You
Speaker 13: know that he thinks he could have beaten Trump.
Speaker 3: And I think that is either delusional or their gas laing.
Speaker 14: President Biden has said repeatedly he was sick during the
Speaker 14: debate June twenty seventh, Atlanta, and he's always been fine,
Speaker 14: and he leaves fine. That is his position, the position
Speaker 14: of many of his top ages as well.
Speaker 2: Thanks Bob, and I love the coming in of well
Speaker 2: he was second the debate, Like, I don't know if
Speaker 2: he was just saying that to give their side of
Speaker 2: the story. He was actually trying to uncover for them,
Speaker 2: but it didn't come off well. But you know again
Speaker 2: another instance of now that it's too late to matter.
Speaker 2: The media is like, oh gee, maybe we should have
Speaker 2: actually covered this. But they read all of the questions
Speaker 2: about Biden's age and decline. They read this as just
Speaker 2: like an unfair right wing smear until it was at
Speaker 2: that debate, completely undeniable, completely undeniable. And you know, people
Speaker 2: like me and Zagger and I'm sure you and Ryan,
Speaker 2: like all of us, even going back to the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty primary twenty nineteen, Yeah, like, look at him now
Speaker 2: versus look at him in the past. This is an
Speaker 2: old man, like he is declining. He is not the
Speaker 2: same person he used to be. And that conversation was
Speaker 2: not allowed at all at the point.
Speaker 4: Oh he had a stutter.
Speaker 2: It's just his stutteries, just recovering from this, don't be ables,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. And now here we are now
Speaker 2: that it doesn't matter, They're like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess that was true. I guess we should
Speaker 4: have looked into that a little bit. What's what are
Speaker 4: you going to do?
Speaker 3: I think this played a critical role in the reckoning
Speaker 3: that changed what we were talking about in terms of
Speaker 3: polarization against Donald Trump in the last couple of years,
Speaker 3: like just like the way that we talk about cancel
Speaker 3: culture and wokeness, like there's this weird thing happening in
Speaker 3: the culture. And I think what the Biden cover up
Speaker 3: became a really big part of this because there were
Speaker 3: obvious signs of sinility going back to twenty nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people still said I am voting
Speaker 3: for Joe Biden because I cannot deal with Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: Like this is not a vote for Joe Biden so
Speaker 3: much as it's a vote against Donald Trump. And then
Speaker 3: by the time twenty twenty four rolls around, there's this,
Speaker 3: you know, the trusted media goes back to the record
Speaker 3: low that had hit in twenty seventeen according to Gallup's polling.
Speaker 3: And I think a huge part of that is because
Speaker 3: cover up implies the media allowed something to be covered up. Right,
Speaker 3: the people who are supposed to prevent something from being
Speaker 3: covered up are journalists. And that is necessarily, even though
Speaker 3: she doesn't frame it this way, necessarily a concession of complicity,
Speaker 3: of saying that we were a part of this, and
Speaker 3: what we're not seeing in media is grappling with that.
Speaker 3: We're saying, oh, the Biden administration was so cynical and dastardly,
Speaker 3: and they told us he was fine. It's like you
Speaker 3: knew he wasn't. I know, you knew he wasn't because
Speaker 3: you saw all of the same videos and you actually
Speaker 3: had more access than the average American who knew that
Speaker 3: he wasn't. So what shattered public trust? This may have
Speaker 3: been like the straw that broke the camel's back. There
Speaker 3: are many things that shattered public trust, but this was
Speaker 3: a huge part of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think this is part of the
Speaker 2: story of why I think liberals have now broken a
Speaker 2: lot of trust with like they are also not trusting
Speaker 2: the mainstream press as much as they used to. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what allowed Biden to be able to succeed, to
Speaker 2: succeed in that twenty twenty primary was because the media
Speaker 2: was like, this is the guy. You have no choice
Speaker 2: but to vote for him. He's the only one that
Speaker 2: could be Trump. And liberals were like, Okay, I guess
Speaker 2: he's the only one it could be Trump. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna ask questions. I'm just going to pull the lever
Speaker 2: for Joe Biden. And it is what it is. And
Speaker 2: you know, Obviously that strategy was ultimately a failure. Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is headed back to the White House. The resistant
Speaker 2: strategy offered by the media was ultimately a failure. Many
Speaker 2: of the media figures that were kind of lionized in
Speaker 2: the resistance, Sarah, Joe and Mika being the most you know,
Speaker 2: visible totems of this, have now basically been like, well,
Speaker 2: Trump's here, I'm sure it'll be okay, we'll go make
Speaker 2: nice with him. After having such incredibly you know, heated
Speaker 2: rhetoric around who he was and what he was going
Speaker 2: to do and what it meant, what the stakes were, etcetera.
Speaker 2: And so it really has exposed them as being frauds,
Speaker 2: as as not really meaning the things that they were saying,
Speaker 2: and also as being failures in terms of the political
Speaker 2: program that they offered in order to try to defeat
Speaker 2: trump Ism. So I mean, that's ultimately what it comes
Speaker 2: down to is like you said this was the way
Speaker 2: to succeed, and it didn't succeed. Here we are with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump coming back into the White House, and you
Speaker 2: don't even seem all that upset about it. So how
Speaker 2: what are we supposed to make of that? But but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's an extraordinary. You can't even just call it a
Speaker 2: media failure because I think you're right, Emily, I think
Speaker 2: there's too much complicity. It's not like they were hoodwinked, right.
Speaker 3: Right, some of them were. Some of them were. They're
Speaker 3: really dumby, but some of them are truly stupid people.
Speaker 2: But all some of them videos that we were watching,
Speaker 2: you were also seeing and you were buying into what
Speaker 2: was the term that Korean John cheer fakes cheap fakes. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's taken out of context.
Speaker 3: And as soon as Karan, Jean Pierre and the White
Speaker 3: House started dropping that term cheap fakes, the media and
Speaker 3: legacy media major institutions like The New York Times took
Speaker 3: it like a press release and reported it back, regurgitated
Speaker 3: it like they were literally taking the Biden administration's press release.
Speaker 3: It was disgusting. And if you go back and look
Speaker 3: at some of the covers from May June, middle of June,
Speaker 3: the June teenth freeze up, the Obama fundraiser, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's despicable in retrospect. So it's most of them aren't
Speaker 3: that dumb. Some of them are, And I think it's
Speaker 3: always fun to make note of that. Some of them
Speaker 3: are just like truly stupid individuals.
Speaker 4: But easily manipulated.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's that low IQ individuals.
Speaker 2: Well, Emily, thank you so much for hosting with me today.
Speaker 2: We are going to do in light of the New
Speaker 2: Year's holiday, we are going to not do show tomorrow,
Speaker 2: but we will do a show on Thursday and it
Speaker 2: will be me and Emily back again. So, Emily, do
Speaker 2: you are you a New Year's resolution person? You got
Speaker 2: anything you're planning for in the New Year's or excited
Speaker 2: about in the New Year's anything you want to share?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not, Crystal. I don't believe in resolutions and I
Speaker 3: don't believe in optimism. So I'm expecting another mediocre year.
Speaker 3: What about you?
Speaker 2: Mediocre is probably the height of my ambitions for the year.
Speaker 2: That's generous of the world in the country. So I
Speaker 2: was telling you, I've decided I need to learn more
Speaker 2: about AI because.
Speaker 3: You should ask AI.
Speaker 2: Well, I have been in part what do I need
Speaker 2: to know about should I be scared chat GPD?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I do.
Speaker 2: I want to have a more textured understanding of if
Speaker 2: I should be as scared as I think I'm should be.
Speaker 2: And this is you know, we talked a lot about
Speaker 2: Elon and the H and B workers and whatever, and
Speaker 2: that's sort of a side show to the main event,
Speaker 2: which is the real reason he would put so much
Speaker 2: money in and David Sax and all these people will
Speaker 2: get involved. Is they really want a freehand to be
Speaker 2: able to do whatever they want in terms of AI development.
Speaker 2: And you know that has the potential to be I
Speaker 2: mean some would say world ending, right like species ending potentially,
Speaker 2: like in the most dystopian scenarios, but even in the
Speaker 2: least dystopian scenarios, you could have massive disruptions of the
Speaker 2: labor force and you know, changes to the way we
Speaker 2: all think about each other, think about work, think about society,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so one of my goals in the
Speaker 2: new year is to try to like have a more
Speaker 2: textured understanding of that, to know if this is just
Speaker 2: like hyperbole and if there's you know, everything will be fine,
Speaker 2: They've got it and it's okay, or if there are
Speaker 2: you know, some deeper things to really be concerned about,
Speaker 2: because I think that's going to be probably the most
Speaker 2: important fight that we watch unfold throughout the coming years.
Speaker 3: It actually splits Trump world in a similar way to
Speaker 3: the H one b visus as well. So the incoming
Speaker 3: administration I think is and it does the same thing
Speaker 3: in democrats, but it's a pretty there's not a clear
Speaker 3: like populist position, and there's not a clear tech position,
Speaker 3: like there's a lot of big tech that's trying to
Speaker 3: control AI, and there's a lot of big tech that's
Speaker 3: trying to like the mark and treasons that are trying
Speaker 3: to democratize AI. So much to be.
Speaker 2: Said, yes indeed, Well, in any case, happy new year
Speaker 2: to you, Emily, and happy new year to all of
Speaker 2: you guys out there. I am not mentally prepared for
Speaker 2: it to be twenty twenty five personally, so I'll be
Speaker 2: spending the next few days wrap my head around that.
Speaker 2: And if you aren't a subscriber, if you can become
Speaker 2: a premium subscriber, obviously that's going to help us a
Speaker 2: lot in the new year to be able to cover
Speaker 2: these stories in the way that we want to and
Speaker 2: provide you guys with the best possible content. If you're
Speaker 2: not able to become a premium subscriber, totally cool. If
Speaker 2: you can help us out by liking and sharing on YouTube,
Speaker 2: leaving comments like leaving a review on the podcast also
Speaker 2: helps out a lot, so in any case, so grateful
Speaker 2: for you guys sticking with us this year. We've seen
Speaker 2: a lot. I guess I'll just say that we've seen
Speaker 2: seen a lot. It's been a wild ride and looking
Speaker 2: forward to covering all of the wild events of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five with you all. Soon see you on Thursday.
Speaker 5: Keep Keep