Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: Welcome to Counterpoints, Crystal, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 3: us today.
Speaker 2: It is my pleasure, and we start today with some fantastic,
Speaker 2: fantastic news. Emily, you want to share the latest with
Speaker 2: regard to Ryan and his wife who had a significant
Speaker 2: surgery yesterday.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: Ryan was actually able to post on AX yesterday update
Speaker 3: surgery today went very well. Doctors described it as a
Speaker 3: quote best case scenario. Thank you to everybody for the
Speaker 3: wild wishes and the prayers. It means a lot, So Crystal,
Speaker 3: you just said best news. Yeah, I mean, this is
Speaker 3: fantastic and a huge relief for Ryan.
Speaker 4: So we're very.
Speaker 3: Excited for them and continuing to.
Speaker 4: Hope for the best.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, so he's with her today helping her to recover.
Speaker 2: But we're really glad to hear that news. We've got
Speaker 2: a bunch of other world news, domestic political news to
Speaker 2: get to. Trump making some really significant comments appearing to
Speaker 2: back down from his trade war against China, so a
Speaker 2: lot to say there. We also got some numbers from
Speaker 2: Tesla where their net income was down seventy one percent
Speaker 2: in the first quarter, so things not going too well
Speaker 2: for Elon Emily No.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, we had the whole show
Speaker 3: basically set yesterday and we did it late, but even then,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump suddenly was talking about how well, maybe the
Speaker 3: tariffs won't be one hundred and forty five percent.
Speaker 4: We will get to that in a moment.
Speaker 3: We have video, we have more updates on how the
Speaker 3: tariffs are affecting the economy. And Crystal a great guest
Speaker 3: lined up for today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Eric, and he focuses on unions. He had a
Speaker 2: really important piece a while back in Jacobin talking about,
Speaker 2: you know, debucking the Smith that you can just put
Speaker 2: tariffs on and you're going to end up with manufacturing jobs,
Speaker 2: and that those are going to be good jobs. You know,
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the turn of the century, the
Speaker 2: era that Donald Trump sort of idealizes under William McKinley, etc.
Speaker 2: Factory jobs were not good jobs. They were dirty, they
Speaker 2: were dangerous, they were low wage, et cetera. It was
Speaker 2: really the union movement and a series of sort of
Speaker 2: historical events as well the US being kind of the
Speaker 2: only power in the world after World War Two that
Speaker 2: enabled that dynamic. So we wanted to dig into that
Speaker 2: with him at a time when you're already starting to
Speaker 2: see actually manufacturing job losses because of what is Trump
Speaker 2: has done on tariff. So really excited to talk to Eric.
Speaker 2: We also, Emily have a bunch of updates.
Speaker 4: Pete.
Speaker 2: Hegsett seems to really be flailing, and you know, I
Speaker 2: rely on you heavily to understand what the hell is
Speaker 2: going on in this situation to the best that any
Speaker 2: of us know, because it just seems like a total
Speaker 2: and complete mess over the Pentagon.
Speaker 3: And both of us will be relying on Ryan, who
Speaker 3: will be with us in spirit to some extent because
Speaker 3: he has a massive new scoop about what's actually going
Speaker 3: on behind closed doors. So that I have to say,
Speaker 3: I think provides maybe the best explanation, so everyone should
Speaker 3: stick around for that we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he actually told me Emily that he was occupying
Speaker 2: himself working on that piece to distract him while his
Speaker 2: wife was in surgery. He was in the waiting room
Speaker 2: and trying to distract himself to keep from going crazy
Speaker 2: working on this piece.
Speaker 5: I forget Ryan.
Speaker 3: I figured that's what was happening because the piece ran.
Speaker 4: Well at the hospital. Is classic Ryan, but it's a
Speaker 4: very important story. We will get to all of that.
Speaker 3: We're going to do a check in on the Maha
Speaker 3: movement because there were a couple of pretty interesting developments
Speaker 3: that just happened yesterday.
Speaker 4: A new announcement about food dies.
Speaker 3: But we also have some updates on how the FDA
Speaker 3: is approaching milk and other important questions. So we are
Speaker 3: going to go ahead and dip into Maha world for
Speaker 3: a segment this morning, Chris. So we have some interesting
Speaker 3: stuff from the Dems too. Rama Manuel went on the
Speaker 3: I've Had It podcast to sort of unload on his
Speaker 3: fellow Democrats as he considers a possible twenty twenty eight
Speaker 3: presidential run.
Speaker 4: It's so ridiculous to say that, but here we are.
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom made new comments and David Hogg continues to
Speaker 3: get pressed. We have quite an interesting clip of him
Speaker 3: and a conversation with Major Garrett on CBS News.
Speaker 4: So a lot to talk about there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed, And I know you love those ladies from that.
Speaker 2: I've had a podcast even looking for a reason to
Speaker 2: pull some content from them and really uplift them. So
Speaker 2: I'm excited that we finally got you that chance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3: I have like a barning bias against them based on
Speaker 3: Bravo World, But anyway.
Speaker 2: I didn't know they existed until recently. You know who
Speaker 2: clued me into them was actually Pisco, who you guys
Speaker 2: had on to talk about immigration. He was like, I
Speaker 2: think you'd love these ladies. Sure enough, I do love
Speaker 2: these ladies.
Speaker 4: That's hilarious. We'll hash this out. I'll clue you in
Speaker 4: on all of the Bravo drama.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, we will get to So
Speaker 3: sixty Minutes having its executive producer, only the third person
Speaker 3: to ever lead.
Speaker 4: The show as executive producer. By the way, that's wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a crazy fact, but left the show yesterday
Speaker 3: with a complaint about lacking editorial independence amid CBS's battle
Speaker 3: with the Trump administration, or I guess its efforts is
Speaker 3: going to placate the Trump administration as they do get.
Speaker 4: Out in court.
Speaker 3: So some interesting stuff going on behind closed doors there,
Speaker 3: and it's probably representative of a broader struggle in the
Speaker 3: media to Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, before we jump in, thank you guys so much.
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Speaker 5: So thank you guys so much for your support.
Speaker 2: And Emily, you want to go ahead and tell the
Speaker 2: people what Trump had to say about the trade war yesterday.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Let's move to these comments that Donald Trump made at
Speaker 3: the White House yesterday evening as he was discussing the terraff.
Speaker 4: So we can go ahead and roll a one here.
Speaker 6: One hundred and forty five percent is very high, and
Speaker 6: it won't be that high. Not going to be that high.
Speaker 6: It got up to that. We were talking about Fenton
Speaker 6: hal where you know, various elements built it up to
Speaker 6: one hundred and forty five. No, it won't be anywhere
Speaker 6: near that high. It'll come down substantially, but it won't
Speaker 6: be zero. Used to be zero. We were just destroyed.
Speaker 6: China was taking us for a ride and just not
Speaker 6: going to have It's not going to happen. We're going
Speaker 6: to be very good to China, have a great relationship
Speaker 6: with presidentcy but they would make billions and billions and
Speaker 6: billions of dollars a year and they would build their
Speaker 6: military out of the United States and what they made,
Speaker 6: so that won't happen. But they're going to do very well,
Speaker 6: and I think they're going to be and I think
Speaker 6: we're going to live together very happily and ideally work together.
Speaker 6: So I think it's going to work out very well.
Speaker 6: But no, it's at one hundred and forty five percent.
Speaker 6: There will not be anywhere near that number.
Speaker 3: So that was at about five fifteen in the evening,
Speaker 3: and we're going to get to this in a moment,
Speaker 3: but came after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett reportedly in a
Speaker 3: private JP Morgan meeting, had been saying something really similar
Speaker 3: and Chris, so, we have a lot of elements to
Speaker 3: get to in this black but I want to just
Speaker 3: camp out on this point quickly and.
Speaker 4: Get your reaction because this is huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, because this is what we've gone through
Speaker 3: the seesaw for the last several weeks about whether the
Speaker 3: tariffs are this is the best in distinction.
Speaker 4: What did he say?
Speaker 3: They are negotiable but not a negotiating tactic. And there's
Speaker 3: Donald Trump putting it very clearly all on the table.
Speaker 4: This is just a negotiating.
Speaker 2: Tactic, right and you know, I'm going to defer to
Speaker 2: our no bertrand had a good analysis of this, he says,
Speaker 2: Trump saying the tariffs of China won't be anywhere near
Speaker 2: as high tonically is probably going to have an even
Speaker 2: worse impact than the US economy in the short run,
Speaker 2: because if you import stuff from China, number one, you're
Speaker 2: going to wait until the terrors come down. You're not
Speaker 2: gonna be oh yeah, let me pay the highest possible
Speaker 2: rate right now. So that's going to compound shortages right
Speaker 2: now in the immediate term, because people are just going
Speaker 2: to weigh out now that Trump has said this is
Speaker 2: not going to stay where it is, and he says,
Speaker 2: you're going to be less motivated to look for any
Speaker 2: alternatives or establish, certainly in domestic manufacturing. Why would you
Speaker 2: go through that effort when the President has already told
Speaker 2: you this is not going to last, which, again he says,
Speaker 2: is why Trump's approaches anything but fort ychs. He's basically
Speaker 2: negotiating with himself in public and making the business environment
Speaker 2: for US companies utterly unpredictable and chaotic. And I think
Speaker 2: all of that is really well said. Obviously, Waltree is
Speaker 2: going to be super happy to see him climb down
Speaker 2: from one hundred and forty five percent. I think the
Speaker 2: China tears were even technically higher than that at this point.
Speaker 2: But you get to a certain level where it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're just not trading with China outside of these few
Speaker 2: exemptions that Trump put into place, which significant, which had
Speaker 2: to do with you know, a lot of high tech
Speaker 2: items that we are not going to be producing in
Speaker 2: the US anytime in the near term. But you know,
Speaker 2: we've been saying emily from the beginning that of trade
Speaker 2: war with China, even under the best circumstances, was going
Speaker 2: to be very difficult for us to win at this
Speaker 2: point because we are so reliant on them for so
Speaker 2: many things. And Trump did not set any sort of
Speaker 2: conditions in which it was even theoretically possible that we
Speaker 2: were going to prevail in this, because he turned the
Speaker 2: entire world against us in the midst of you know,
Speaker 2: launching a trade war against not just China, but the
Speaker 2: entire world, and he's not doing any of the sort
Speaker 2: of domestic policy to assist US consumers or US businesses,
Speaker 2: which were, you know, being slaughtered by these terrorsts, especially
Speaker 2: small businesses, like there was no way they could survive
Speaker 2: all of this. So in every way he went about
Speaker 2: this and just the worst for his own goals, supposed goals,
Speaker 2: whatever those are, he went about it all in the
Speaker 2: worst possible way. And now, frankly, it's humiliating that he
Speaker 2: has to back down already in this very public way
Speaker 2: when China hasn't budged an inch.
Speaker 3: Well, his i mean, his strategy was dependent on maintaining
Speaker 3: this sort of bluff, and we all kind of knew
Speaker 3: and there were hints of it obviously that this was
Speaker 3: just I mean, everyone knew that this was a negotiating tactic,
Speaker 3: but what they didn't know is whether or not he
Speaker 3: would just say like screw it, keep it out one
Speaker 3: forty five, like we're just gonna go full send for
Speaker 3: an indefinite period of time, even if this was always
Speaker 3: meant to be a negotiating type but what he did
Speaker 3: just there is both take away his leverage but also
Speaker 3: without providing certainty for domestic producers. And so it's it's
Speaker 3: really like, not only is it not being augmented with
Speaker 3: the sort of policies that you would see domestically, not
Speaker 3: as not only is it not being augmented with a
Speaker 3: really coherent so far, with a really coherent set of
Speaker 3: deals to reshore particular industries, to support particular industries, it's
Speaker 3: still like it's just as he's received from him right there.
Speaker 3: It's completely being dominated or defined by what he chooses
Speaker 3: to say on a daily basis, which is not at
Speaker 3: all helpful to the project of onshoring.
Speaker 2: And yes, go ahead, just really quick, just to summarize,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of what he and his advisors claimed.
Speaker 2: There were a variety of goals that were claimed here,
Speaker 2: right one of them was to get the treasury bond
Speaker 2: rate down. That has gone in the opposite direction, And
Speaker 2: I do continue to think that is a significant reason,
Speaker 2: the fact that it was so clear the world was
Speaker 2: not fleeing to safety in US bonds or in dollars,
Speaker 2: they were just fleeing the US all together. And I
Speaker 2: continue to think that was probably the most important reason
Speaker 2: why Trump is now backing down from this, because that
Speaker 2: was so incredibly, like catastrophically existentially disastrous the US economy
Speaker 2: so fail on the chargery bond rates. Supposedly this was
Speaker 2: going to bring back manufacturing jobs, where we're going to
Speaker 2: cover with Eric the way that manufacturing jobs were already
Speaker 2: taking a massive hit because of this policy. And then
Speaker 2: the other thing that you alluded to there, Emily is oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to get all these great deals. Well we
Speaker 2: have no deals, zero deals. We're at zero deals right now,
Speaker 2: so you know, none of these purported somewhat contradictory aims.
Speaker 2: We're actually coming to fruition. And now Trump is you know,
Speaker 2: Trump is sort of pulling the record saying, okay, we
Speaker 2: got to we can't keep this up. This is just
Speaker 2: not going to work out.
Speaker 3: And let's roll this clip of Harry Enton on CNN
Speaker 3: as we try to figure out why Donald Trump so
Speaker 3: as the things that he says. What's sort of the
Speaker 3: backdrop Harry Anton explaining some of the drama in the
Speaker 3: stock market actually historical parallel.
Speaker 4: So let's roll this next clip.
Speaker 7: A two.
Speaker 8: The SMP has dropped the most under Trump for any
Speaker 8: president at this point in their presidency since the SMP
Speaker 8: five hundred was in fact created back in nineteen hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty seven.
Speaker 4: And indeed it is not anywhere.
Speaker 8: Close, folks, It's not anywhere close.
Speaker 9: Under Trump.
Speaker 8: It's dropped get this fourteen percent. The next closest one
Speaker 8: was George W. Bush back in two thousand and one,
Speaker 8: a drop of just half that at seven percent. No
Speaker 8: other elected president at this point in their presidency saw
Speaker 8: a drop of five percent or more. So Donald Trump
Speaker 8: is on a planet all by himself, a planet you
Speaker 8: do not want to be on. The American people don't
Speaker 8: want to be on chance of a recession. You see,
Speaker 8: I have four different little metrics. We can look at
Speaker 8: JP Morgan's sixty percent polymarket fifty seven percent Reuters forty
Speaker 8: five percent, Goldman Sachs forty five percent. Blame Trump if
Speaker 8: there's a recession in the next twelve months. Look at
Speaker 8: this a lot or quite a bit. That's the majority
Speaker 8: winner right there at fifty two percent, a little or
Speaker 8: not at all, Perhaps a little bit high, some might
Speaker 8: say at thirty two percent, but still here, the clear
Speaker 8: majority of Americans say that if in fact there is
Speaker 8: recession in the next twelve months, which at this point
Speaker 8: looks about fifty to fifty, the majority of the American
Speaker 8: public says that the buck will stop at the White House,
Speaker 8: stop at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 3: So, Crystal, to your point, there's a lot weighing politically
Speaker 3: on Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: And this idea. As they said when they.
Speaker 3: Rolled these terraces out, I mean, they had again mixed
Speaker 3: messaging about how serious the quote short term pain would be.
Speaker 3: Everyone kind of knew it was very obvious there would
Speaker 3: be short term pain looking back to Ronald Reagan's presidency
Speaker 3: and stany recovered by nineteen eighty four from the recession
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 4: But that gave them some comfort.
Speaker 3: And the question is, though, how long they're willing to
Speaker 3: stomach the short term pain, and if the short term
Speaker 3: pain is actually reflective of something that is a ship
Speaker 3: that's not going to be turned around by the time
Speaker 3: the midterms come, by the time there's another presidential election.
Speaker 3: Whether or not Donald Trump cares about that as a
Speaker 3: different question, but the politics of this are going to
Speaker 3: get pretty rough, and Trump seems to be responding to
Speaker 3: that too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just have two questions. One of them is, you know,
Speaker 2: all the the botchiest of the world, the people, the
Speaker 2: maga world influencers who were like making name for themselves
Speaker 2: by being like tariffs now, tariffs forever, this is the
Speaker 2: greatest economic policy. This is delivering for Main Street over
Speaker 2: Wall Street and showing the ELI It's like, what's what's
Speaker 2: the reaction now going to be now that he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're we're just not really going to do that anymore.
Speaker 2: I guess they'll go back to from the this will
Speaker 2: create jobs. Now, they'll go back to art of the deal.
Speaker 2: In the meme that shows them going back and forth.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because it's also like, where does he
Speaker 3: land on this when he says it's not going to
Speaker 3: be one hundred and forty five, What.
Speaker 4: Does that mean?
Speaker 3: What is it going to be eighty percent? Does it
Speaker 3: mean one hundred and twenty percent? Like it's just so crazy.
Speaker 5: Because it's gonna be one hundred and forty four percent, one.
Speaker 3: Hundred forty four And if it does remain something like
Speaker 3: one twenty or he changes his mind, I mean he's been,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to maintain a bluff for a few
Speaker 3: weeks and then just comes out and says that on
Speaker 3: a day like yesterday. So it's it's really still very
Speaker 3: hard to know where this goes.
Speaker 4: But what we do know is.
Speaker 3: That he's willing to make deals, and we just don't
Speaker 3: know where those deals are going to end up.
Speaker 5: But is anyone willing to make a deal with him
Speaker 5: at this point?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that was the you got you
Speaker 2: and Soccer covered this like that the Japan dating that
Speaker 2: they came away empty handed. That's part of what triggered
Speaker 2: you know, will market selloff on that particular day, because yeah,
Speaker 2: the rest of the world is that, like, why would
Speaker 2: we make a deal with you? You people are crazy and
Speaker 2: you can't even tell us what you want, Like, even
Speaker 2: if we want to make a deal, you don't even
Speaker 2: know what you're doing, So how can we even, you know,
Speaker 2: settle on some sort of terms here.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows because it's just Donald Trump and Scott Bessett
Speaker 3: can go out and make this sort of intellectual case
Speaker 3: for it and try to put like meat on the
Speaker 3: bones of the policy that Donald Trump changes when he speaks,
Speaker 3: you know, just like because he's talking and he's in
Speaker 3: a question an answer session with reporters and ends up
Speaker 3: saying something.
Speaker 4: That you know, maybe he didn't plan this, but that
Speaker 4: doesn't reassure markets.
Speaker 3: It's not, you know, and we should get into this
Speaker 3: crystal because this was really interesting as it was happening yesterday.
Speaker 3: We can put a three on the screen. This is
Speaker 3: the CNBC tear Street. Tear Street just about how markets
Speaker 3: closed yesterday. So DOWD jumps a thousand points Tuesday to
Speaker 3: snap four day string of losses. That's where things ended up.
Speaker 3: But as the day was going on, there was some
Speaker 3: quiet interesting movement. We can put the next element up.
Speaker 3: This is Joe Eisenthal noticed Scott Bessen gave comments that
Speaker 3: massively moved the markets earlier to a private JP Morgan
Speaker 3: event that wasn't open to the public or the media.
Speaker 4: What he said.
Speaker 3: What Besson said was that quote the tariff stand off
Speaker 3: with China is unsustainable and that he expects the situation
Speaker 3: to de escalate. That's per Bloomberg's description of what he
Speaker 3: was actually talking about. So we can put that element up.
Speaker 3: This is the next this is the next element. This
Speaker 3: is how Bloomberg This was a JP Morgan investor summit
Speaker 3: here in Washington, DC, is not open to the public,
Speaker 3: and what Bessant was saying at the investor's summit move
Speaker 3: markets because when the Bloomberg report came out, it was
Speaker 3: kind of a preview of what Donald Trump would say
Speaker 3: later after the closing bell run five PM that they
Speaker 3: expect to de escalate with China. Charlie Gasparino, this was
Speaker 3: later in the day as well as around two eighteen PM.
Speaker 4: And it's the next element, he said.
Speaker 3: I've been told by a person close to Bessett the
Speaker 3: reports on his remarks about a trade deal with China
Speaker 3: having been imminent overstate what he said. He meant that
Speaker 3: there's roover talk to de escalation, but much also depends
Speaker 3: on China's willingness to compromise on trade as well. So
Speaker 3: Crystal just stopping right there with the Charles Gasparino point
Speaker 3: so Besant says something behind closed doors that is on
Speaker 3: the same page with what the president says later in
Speaker 3: the day. But the Treasury tries to clean up, or
Speaker 3: the administration at least tries to clean up the best
Speaker 3: remark by talking to Gasparino and trying to downplay what
Speaker 3: Besant said.
Speaker 4: That's my assumption.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe it was somebody who's in the meeting
Speaker 3: who's not the administration. I don't know who the source is,
Speaker 3: but he says it's a person close to Scott Bessant.
Speaker 3: So I would assume that somebody in the administration, they
Speaker 3: try to clean it up, and then Trump just comes
Speaker 3: out a few hours later and it's like, yeah, we're
Speaker 3: de escalating one forty five.
Speaker 4: That's a crazy number. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: And to your point earlier, Emily, like we all know
Speaker 2: that the only reason he climbed down from his original,
Speaker 2: like the insane original chart of tariffs was because Bessant
Speaker 2: and Lutnik figured out how to get Peter Navarro away
Speaker 2: from him for a little while to be able to
Speaker 2: convince him and then type out the tweet in real time,
Speaker 2: you know, so hey, they were able to get a
Speaker 2: yer yesterday maybe to today. Peter Navarro is going to
Speaker 2: have his year and it's going to be a totally
Speaker 2: different approach. We have no idea but to go back
Speaker 2: to the Scott Bessant comments and why this I think
Speaker 2: is quite significant is they're framing themselves and their defenders
Speaker 2: are framing themselves as oh, they're looking out for Main Street.
Speaker 2: Here is Scott Bessett giving market moving information to insiders
Speaker 2: at a JP Morgan investor summit who had hours and
Speaker 2: the markets were moving for hours, and people are like,
Speaker 2: why are the markets going Like what is going on?
Speaker 2: Why are the markets going up? And now we know
Speaker 2: it's because all the insiders got this information that hey,
Speaker 2: we're backing down on the China piece, and the you know,
Speaker 2: they get to benefit and they get to cash in,
Speaker 2: and the public gets Charles Gasprino coming out and whatever
Speaker 2: his sourcing was. We be like, oh, no, no, that's not
Speaker 2: really true. That's not really true. So I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just it reminds very much of the day that Trump
Speaker 2: spiked the markets with rolling back, stepping back from his
Speaker 2: original Tarff posture and alone and behold Charles schwab Is
Speaker 2: in the White House that day and Trump's out there
Speaker 2: bragging about how he was able to cash into the
Speaker 2: two point five billion dollars on a single day. So
Speaker 2: there have been a lot of people who have benefited
Speaker 2: and accumulated vast resources because of these massive market swings
Speaker 2: that have been wholly engineered by this White House.
Speaker 3: I kind of continue to think the tweet, or I
Speaker 3: guess the true social post Trump put out that day,
Speaker 3: like all caps It's a good time to buy, was
Speaker 3: a cover your ass post knowing that you know they're
Speaker 3: going to be It's hard to prove a lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff, but it also just says like it gives
Speaker 3: everyone excuse that.
Speaker 4: We were listening to the president.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe they had information that wasn't public, but
Speaker 3: also maybe it was just tweet Like that's where you're
Speaker 3: able to sort of land on all of it. But
Speaker 3: what I mean this is such a there was a possibility,
Speaker 3: and I know you and Sager have covered this a lot.
Speaker 3: There was a possibility I think for something that was
Speaker 3: upsetting to Wall Street but coherent and did and do
Speaker 3: some short term pain, but was I think very clearly
Speaker 3: for the sake of long term and where we.
Speaker 4: Are right now. On April twenty third is.
Speaker 3: Sort of Trump waving has wand in different directions every
Speaker 3: other day, and movie markets and affecting I mean, if
Speaker 3: you think, you know, like the Trump comment is very
Speaker 3: trumpy and funny for a second, and then you're like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh. Small businesses who are trying to make
Speaker 3: plans around these tariffs just at the whim of what
Speaker 3: the President decides to do on a given day, their
Speaker 3: livelihoods are affected by it.
Speaker 2: So it's yeah, if you're a small business, like, it's
Speaker 2: not just your business, it's your life. Like people put
Speaker 2: their whole like hopes, dreams that you know, lady I've
Speaker 2: talked about with the busy baby business like she leveraged
Speaker 2: her house to be able to expand into Walmart, and
Speaker 2: it's all on the line for them. And so for
Speaker 2: this whole thing to be so haphazard and so casual
Speaker 2: and with no attention whatsoever to the cruelty that is
Speaker 2: entailed at the heart of this policy with regard to
Speaker 2: workers and with regard to small and medium businesses is
Speaker 2: just you know, it's it is astonishing. It truly is
Speaker 2: astonishing to watch. And now the only question left is
Speaker 2: so I said earlier, I was like, I have two questions.
Speaker 2: One is about what are all the defenders going to
Speaker 2: say now? The other one is about how much damage
Speaker 2: has already been done? Like even if okay, let's say
Speaker 2: he fully backs away and okay, we're not doing this
Speaker 2: anymore and we're just going to go back to more
Speaker 2: or less the status or whatever, Like, how much damage?
Speaker 2: How many businesses have already gone under? How many businesses
Speaker 2: are already so freaked out about whatever the hell he's
Speaker 2: going to say tomorrow or the next week or ninety
Speaker 2: days from now, that they're just like, I'm freezing investment.
Speaker 2: We're already seeing layoffs. We're already seeing huge freezes in
Speaker 2: terms of you know, businesses investing for the future. So
Speaker 2: is that all going to just magically reappear? Are we
Speaker 2: going to have shortages and messed up supply chains for
Speaker 2: a long period of time because of this huge disruption
Speaker 2: that is engineered by this administration? You know, I think
Speaker 2: there's probably going to be a lot of fallout even
Speaker 2: from what has already been done. Not to mention the
Speaker 2: way that the world has now significantly moved against the US,
Speaker 2: as evidenced by you know, gold going up and the
Speaker 2: dollar weakening against basically every currency, and you know, chargery
Speaker 2: bonds moving the opposite way of what you would expect
Speaker 2: if there's a flight to safety. I think some of
Speaker 2: these things there's no there's no putting the toothpaste back
Speaker 2: in the tube.
Speaker 3: Probably true, And it just doesn't have to That's again
Speaker 3: what's so frustrating is it doesn't have to be this way.
Speaker 3: Whether or not you sort of come to this question
Speaker 3: of protectionism from the left or the right, there's a
Speaker 3: pretty good argument for some targeted tariffs. And again, if
Speaker 3: you're a free trader, you absolutely hate that, but there's
Speaker 3: a pretty good argument for some targeted tariffs, even I
Speaker 3: think and Soccer and I think I agree on this.
Speaker 3: There's a decent argument for the ten percent global tariff.
Speaker 3: It's not like the craziest.
Speaker 4: Thing in the world, but but it doesn't have to.
Speaker 3: Be done in a way that leaves people stressed every
Speaker 3: single day with no clue what's going to happen next. Like, yes,
Speaker 3: the uncertainty I think was an interesting leverage point for
Speaker 3: the time leading up to Liberation Day and the immediate
Speaker 3: aftermath of Liberation Day, But then what did the administration
Speaker 3: do to actually seal these deals?
Speaker 4: With all of these different countries.
Speaker 3: What did they do to augment domestic industry that was
Speaker 3: going to be hit so hard by this.
Speaker 4: It just none of it had to be this way.
Speaker 3: Even if you support the end goal, maybe you do
Speaker 3: it from the left to the right.
Speaker 4: It just didn't.
Speaker 3: This doesn't have to happen like this, and that's really
Speaker 3: sad at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Elon actually waged in yesterday about
Speaker 2: the tariffs, and Tesla had their earnings call.
Speaker 5: We found out that they're earning.
Speaker 2: I mean that company is in dire streets and we'll
Speaker 2: get to a little bit more of that. But on
Speaker 2: the earnings call, he really did stance himself from Trump's
Speaker 2: tariff policy, saying, listen, is this the policy of the
Speaker 2: United of the President of the United States. It's up
Speaker 2: to him. But I've made clear I don't support this direction.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he
Speaker 2: had to say.
Speaker 10: I just want to size that the tariff decision is
Speaker 10: entirely up to the President of the United States. I
Speaker 10: will weigh with my advice with the President, which he
Speaker 10: will listen to my advice, but then it's up to him.
Speaker 10: Of course, to make his decision. I've been on the
Speaker 10: recquort many times, is saying that I believe lower tariffs
Speaker 10: are generally a good idea or prosperity, but this decision
Speaker 10: is pominently up to the elected representative of the people,
Speaker 10: being the President of the United States.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'll.
Speaker 10: Continue to advocate for lower tariffs rather than higher tariffs,
Speaker 10: but that's all I can do.
Speaker 2: So the highest profile member of the Trump administration outside
Speaker 2: of Trump himself saying that he does not support the
Speaker 2: direction of the cariffs, not that that's any sort of
Speaker 2: a surprise, and he had been sniping at Peter Navarro
Speaker 2: and made clear already his upset with that direction. He
Speaker 2: also said something else very significant, Emily, which is he said,
Speaker 2: starting next month, I'll be allocating far more time to Tesla,
Speaker 2: but also indicated he's going to continue to spend a
Speaker 2: day or two per week on government for as long
Speaker 2: as Trump wants. So you know, it's he's he's kind
Speaker 2: of doges. I don't want to say it's completely ending,
Speaker 2: but it is petering out. And on the one hand,
Speaker 2: it has certainly been a complete failure with regard to
Speaker 2: the stated goals of Doge of any sort of efficiency.
Speaker 2: They've definitely made the government less efficient. They have failed
Speaker 2: to cut costs. Government spending is at an all time high.
Speaker 2: But they have done a lot of damage and this
Speaker 2: will actually come up in the block we do on Maha,
Speaker 2: you know, cutting food inspectors so we can no longer
Speaker 2: like regulate milk. Basically, you know, social Security has been
Speaker 2: under assault, and now if you need to call, if
Speaker 2: you need to go to a field office, the line
Speaker 2: is going to be like a mile long, and you're
Speaker 2: going to wait hours to get your issue dealt with.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's been effective at making the government
Speaker 2: work a lot more poorly. And Elon as libertarian and
Speaker 2: someone who also has all of these conflicts of interest
Speaker 2: and doesn't want these agencies regulating his businesses, so he
Speaker 2: got a lot out of it. But you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of the publicly stated advertised goals of efficiency and
Speaker 2: cost savings, that has all been a total and complete,
Speaker 2: undeniable failure.
Speaker 5: At this point, The.
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal This is a eight had a big
Speaker 3: piece on how this all has gone down for Tesla
Speaker 3: as Elon Musk started to get closer and closer to
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and you know, it is It was always
Speaker 3: an interesting move because from Musk's the perspective of his portfolio,
Speaker 3: it's more than just Tesla, and Tesla, of course, is
Speaker 3: more than just a car company. A lot of its
Speaker 3: valuation is about the technology as much as the AI technology,
Speaker 3: as much as it is about the cars themselves, and
Speaker 3: that's why it's always been valued so high. But from
Speaker 3: the perspective of his portfolio, becoming part of the Trump
Speaker 3: administration could benefit his other companies in ways that go
Speaker 3: beyond just sort of Tesla's relationship with the government. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a man who has SpaceX and Neuralink and
Speaker 3: Boring Company, and it's we just keep listing them. So
Speaker 3: it was just, you know, if you get really close
Speaker 3: to Donald Trump and you're an electric vehicle company, what
Speaker 3: does that do to the customer base? That in and
Speaker 3: of itself was always.
Speaker 4: Like a huge, huge risk.
Speaker 3: Crystal, and I feel like, I'm curious what you make
Speaker 3: of this. I actually feel like that's probably hit the
Speaker 3: sales the most, Like Tesla has become.
Speaker 4: It's a brand.
Speaker 3: It's a brand that is now associated with Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and that's you know, you get roughly half of the country,
Speaker 3: a little less than half the country voting for for Trump.
Speaker 3: That's not a big enough market, especially when you're already
Speaker 3: trying to pull people who are interested in electric.
Speaker 2: Vehicles, right, And the half of the country that support
Speaker 2: more or less that supports Trump is the half that
Speaker 2: is much much, much, much much less likely.
Speaker 5: To buy evs.
Speaker 2: So you're directly alienating your own customer base, and not
Speaker 2: just here in you know, Europe, in Canada, in China
Speaker 2: and so yes, I think the net incomes line seventy
Speaker 2: one percent like that is an astonishing collapse for Tesla,
Speaker 2: and it I think is not one hundred percent, but
Speaker 2: significantly due to Elon making him such a toxic, divisive figure.
Speaker 2: Because remember, he's not just you know, taking control vast
Speaker 2: swaths of our government. He's meddling in UK politics, he's
Speaker 2: meddling in German politics. He's trying to involve himself in
Speaker 2: all of these countries and they're domestic political life and
Speaker 2: a lot of consumers. Elon has been profoundly unpopular in
Speaker 2: Europe for quite for a while before his popularity plummeted
Speaker 2: here as well, and so yes, the brand is very
Speaker 2: closely associated with him. There are a lot of competitors
Speaker 2: out there. Now you know, if you are in most
Speaker 2: of the world, you can buy a BYD. It appears
Speaker 2: to be a better car, the technology appears to be better,
Speaker 2: it is less expensive. So you have that competition coming
Speaker 2: online at the same time that he becomes such a
Speaker 2: toxic figure. And even here in the US, you know
Speaker 2: the domestic automaker EVS. I happen to own one of
Speaker 2: them at the board and they're good. You know, it's
Speaker 2: no longer that they're the only game in town. So
Speaker 2: and because Tesla as a brand has become such a
Speaker 2: sort of polarizing brand, a lot of people are not
Speaker 2: trying to make a political statement with just their vehicle
Speaker 2: drive down the street.
Speaker 5: They're not trying. They don't want to.
Speaker 2: Get like dirty looks or judged or like have their
Speaker 2: political views on display or whatever just based on the
Speaker 2: car that they're driving. And so that's going to make
Speaker 2: it less appealing as well. And I think it's going
Speaker 2: to be difficult for them to climb out of this
Speaker 2: because you face not only him as a toxic figure
Speaker 2: and so closely aligned with the brand, you also face
Speaker 2: this you know, competitive pressure coming from BYD and you
Speaker 2: know Tesla has a relatively stale inventory. And then another
Speaker 2: piece of this that we'll get to in a minute
Speaker 2: is the cyber truck has been one of the biggest
Speaker 2: flops in automotive history.
Speaker 5: Just a total complete flop.
Speaker 2: We cover before that Tesla dealerships are not even taking
Speaker 2: it as like a trade in. So Tesla is not
Speaker 2: taking their own vehicle as a trade in because no
Speaker 2: one wants this thing. They've had to recall almost all
Speaker 2: of them. They've had all kinds of quality issues. It
Speaker 2: looks freakish, you know, it's already. It's already just the
Speaker 2: look of it is going to be divisive. And then
Speaker 2: with the normal Tesla cars, it's like, Okay, maybe you
Speaker 2: got this before, you knew what was going on with
Speaker 2: Elan whatever, before he was on their sigiling on Inauguration Day.
Speaker 2: But with the cyber truck, like you kind of feel like,
Speaker 2: all right, you knew what you were getting with this guy.
Speaker 2: And so it is a very overtly political symbol and
Speaker 2: most people just don't, like they're not looking for that
Speaker 2: in their vehicle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we could do an entire show on
Speaker 3: how much I despise the cyber truck, but we should
Speaker 3: probably get to the rest of the news here, but
Speaker 3: a nine B up on the screen. This is Joe
Speaker 3: Wisenthal pulling out a quote from the Boomberg article about
Speaker 3: how Trump's Tesla says that Trump's trade war has had
Speaker 3: adverse impacts on Tesla's global supply chain. No surprise there,
Speaker 3: And the trade war quote could have a meaningful impact
Speaker 3: on demand in.
Speaker 4: The near term.
Speaker 3: Again, no surprise there. Then we can move on to
Speaker 3: the next element. This was the one that we just
Speaker 3: showed earlier about how bad the quarter was for the
Speaker 3: cyber truck. That is a twenty four percent dip, which
Speaker 3: is about double the dip for the Model Y and
Speaker 3: the other Tesla offerings. And finally, last element in this
Speaker 3: block is a eleven.
Speaker 4: This is a report in the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: This is a story about report in the Washington Post
Speaker 3: in which Elon Musk has reportedly said he wants to
Speaker 3: leave politics because he's tired of quote attacks from the left.
Speaker 3: So Crystal, one of the big questions that we've had
Speaker 3: here on the show is the extent to which Elon
Speaker 3: Musk is benefiting both in front of the public and
Speaker 3: behind closed doors. And a lot of that would not
Speaker 3: come from Tesla, but from probably companies were like Starlink
Speaker 3: in space that are more closely intertwined with the government,
Speaker 3: and that's a giant unopened question or unanswered question. Jury
Speaker 3: is out on it. We may not know the details
Speaker 3: of that literally for years to come, because a lot
Speaker 3: was happening really quickly behind closed.
Speaker 4: Doors with DOJ.
Speaker 3: But Tesla obviously is like his signature brand company and
Speaker 3: all of that. I think it'll be, like you said,
Speaker 3: difficult for it to recover from this. I don't think
Speaker 3: it'll be impossible for Doesla to recover, because there is
Speaker 3: a lot of value in the tech itself.
Speaker 4: But all that is.
Speaker 3: To say this is for Usk, the Tesla drop is
Speaker 3: probably nothing compared to the benefits he's still reaped by
Speaker 3: being so closely intertwined with a Trump administration, or will
Speaker 3: continue to, or we'll see.
Speaker 4: Those benefits coming down the line.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to make that point quickly, because well,
Speaker 3: it's true that Trump is heard in Wall Street and
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is part of that, and he has probably
Speaker 3: sacrificed a little bit with Tesla here, significantly with Tesla here,
Speaker 3: whether it was intentionally or otherwise, those benefits are still
Speaker 3: we don't really know exactly what he's gotten out of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think Elon is a very ideological force.
Speaker 2: I think it's wrong to think of his aspirations solely
Speaker 2: being I mean, he likes to make money out and
Speaker 2: you know, he's been able to shift some contracts in
Speaker 2: his direction and gut the regulators that were causing him
Speaker 2: problems other businesses whatever. So he gets that out of it, certainly.
Speaker 2: But you know, my sense from the reporting on him
Speaker 2: is that his real tesla is not the apple of
Speaker 2: his eye right now. His real goal is this SpaceX
Speaker 2: colonizing Mars, which you know is sort of an insane thing,
Speaker 2: like if you know anything about the actual atmosphere on Mars,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so remains to be seen how much
Speaker 2: he is able to shift Pentagon resources and NASA resources
Speaker 2: in his direction for SpaceX to try to accomplish his
Speaker 2: like you know, man on Mars colony dream or whatever
Speaker 2: it is that he has in mind. So, like you said,
Speaker 2: a lot of unanswered questions about how much this is
Speaker 2: going to serve Elon's interest in the long term. It's
Speaker 2: also possible that he placed a big bet that it
Speaker 2: would serve his interest in his goal, his main character
Speaker 2: goal of you know, making humans interplanetary and interplanetary civilization,
Speaker 2: and then he ends up just screwing himself because the
Speaker 2: bets don't pay off. That's certainly the possible outcome here
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: We're sending Sager to Mars and he's going with Katy Perry.
Speaker 3: That's that's what we're leaving this block.
Speaker 5: I think that will heal the world.
Speaker 4: He will heal the world, right, Crystal, Let's get to
Speaker 4: the guests.
Speaker 2: Joining us now for a conversation on the way that
Speaker 2: Trump's trade war has already hurt manufacturing jobs and what
Speaker 2: it would actually take to make not only more reindustrialization
Speaker 2: in this country, but make those jobs good jobs again.
Speaker 5: Is Eric Blank.
Speaker 2: He's an assistant professor at Rutgers and he's also out
Speaker 2: with a terrific new book, highly recommend. Let's put it
Speaker 2: up on the screen. It's called We Are the Union.
Speaker 2: How worker to worker organizing is revitalizing labor and winning
Speaker 2: big and extremely relevant and timely book given and how
Speaker 2: important unions were to building factory jobs into good, well
Speaker 2: paying jobs that were you know, regulated and safety regulations
Speaker 2: and all of those sorts of things. So Eric, great
Speaker 2: to see.
Speaker 5: You, welcome.
Speaker 9: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, guys, if we could put up on
Speaker 2: the screen.
Speaker 5: B two.
Speaker 2: We've had already some indications that because of the chaos
Speaker 2: of Trump's trade war and the way that it's you know,
Speaker 2: unilateral and across the board, we've had some early job losses.
Speaker 2: A paper mill that has been opened for two hundred
Speaker 2: years that is now going to be closed. Could put
Speaker 2: the next one up on the screen. We've got a
Speaker 2: list of a number of different companies Stalantis, Mac Trucks,
Speaker 2: Cleveland Cliffs, John Deere, Summitt, Interconnect, Whirlpool, and Tenaco where
Speaker 2: workers have already been laid off. Now, I do want
Speaker 2: to say I think some of this, you know, uh
Speaker 2: Stilantis in particular, I saw some reporting on how they
Speaker 2: just you know, bought a bunch of their shares back,
Speaker 2: like some of these companies are always looking for an
Speaker 2: excuse to layoff workers and blame some other factor. But
Speaker 2: I also think it's fair to say that Trump has
Speaker 2: created a business environment, given that there's tariffs on so
Speaker 2: many of the inputs that are required for manufacturing as well,
Speaker 2: that has led to directly to some of these job losses.
Speaker 2: So Eric wanted to get you know, your thoughts on
Speaker 2: not only the impact of these this trade war now
Speaker 2: in the near term, but also more importantly, what would
Speaker 2: it actually take to make sure that we did make
Speaker 2: more things in this country as many people want to,
Speaker 2: and not only that that it wouldn't be done just
Speaker 2: by robots or by low paid workers the way that
Speaker 2: it was in the early nineteen hundreds that the era
Speaker 2: that Trump really sort of idealizes.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, the first thing to say is that
Speaker 11: Trump's actual rollout of these tariffs has been extremely counterproductive,
Speaker 11: at least in the short term, for the nominal goal
Speaker 11: of increasing manufacturing.
Speaker 9: So you give the numbers. I don't need to go
Speaker 9: into that more.
Speaker 11: Depth, but it is just worth saying that because of
Speaker 11: the across the board this and then frankly just because
Speaker 11: of the volatility and a no ability of what Trump's
Speaker 11: actually going to end up doing, it's hurt the economy
Speaker 11: as a whole, and so it's very counterproductive for the
Speaker 11: goal of if this is actually the.
Speaker 9: Main goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US.
Speaker 11: That being said, it's also just worth questioning the basic
Speaker 11: premise of Trump's vision insofar as it exists, which is
Speaker 11: that you're going to bring back American prosperity just by
Speaker 11: bringing back factory jobs. And essentially what this leaves out
Speaker 11: is that the reason today we associate factory jobs with
Speaker 11: you know, a middle class lifestyle, you know, images of
Speaker 11: the nineteen fifties and all that is because there were unions.
Speaker 11: Factory jobs were horrible in this country before unions, and
Speaker 11: it took the unionization jobs of the nineteen thirties and
Speaker 11: nineteen forties to make them decent jobs. And you don't
Speaker 11: need to just look back, you know, to the Gilded Age,
Speaker 11: which is what Trump does. You know, Trump's always talking about,
Speaker 11: you know, we need to go back to the Gilded Age. Well,
Speaker 11: you know, read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to get
Speaker 11: a sense of, you know, how horrible it was to
Speaker 11: work in the factories of that era. But you don't
Speaker 11: have to go back, you know, the century you go
Speaker 11: to understand what kind of jobs would come back if
Speaker 11: these factory jobs aren't union jobs. Just like look at
Speaker 11: the US South right where Honda workers, for instance, Honda
Speaker 11: workers in the US South make less than McDonald's workers
Speaker 11: make in Denmark, right, the pay and the security that
Speaker 11: we associate with factory jobs in general just don't exist
Speaker 11: when you don't have unions.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to actually ask about that tension because
Speaker 3: I went back and looked recently at where the jobs
Speaker 3: from chips restoring all of the industrial policy basically went
Speaker 3: over the last.
Speaker 4: Several years, and they went overwhelmingly to write to work states.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you map them onto a map of
Speaker 3: right to work states, it's like, it's crazy. And it's
Speaker 3: not just red states, it's purple states and more Lake
Speaker 3: Arizona places like that, And that speaks to I guess
Speaker 3: I'm curious for your take on this. How it's true
Speaker 3: that American labor costs more than labor in Mexico or
Speaker 3: in other parts of the world, and so if you
Speaker 3: want to reshore in a way that actually benefits the
Speaker 3: middle class and doesn't create jobs that pay less than
Speaker 3: the example you just gave a fast food work that.
Speaker 4: Has to be coupled with something.
Speaker 3: And the way that I'm asking this question to you
Speaker 3: is we've seen the right really struggle with what to
Speaker 3: do with organized labor and what to do with this
Speaker 3: idea that you know they want jobs that support middle
Speaker 3: class families and communities. So what would your advice be,
Speaker 3: or what would your response be, your argument be to
Speaker 3: people on the right who say, these are coming in
Speaker 3: to right to work states, we need more right to work,
Speaker 3: we need cheaper labor, how should they be thinking about that?
Speaker 11: Well, you know, the first thing to say is that
Speaker 11: for a lot of these capital intensive factory jobs, labor
Speaker 11: costs are really a marginal part of the overall profitability.
Speaker 11: So it's just not the case that what is driving
Speaker 11: these companies to Mexico and to China is just that
Speaker 11: labor coasts themselves are so large. This is a tiny
Speaker 11: fraction of the overall pie. And in fact, a big
Speaker 11: reason for the lack of competitivity of America and manufacturing
Speaker 11: is just, frankly, the lack of investment in new technology
Speaker 11: and the lack of real infrastructure development, the types of
Speaker 11: things that you need government policy to boost. So it's
Speaker 11: not the case that the only way or even the
Speaker 11: main way to have a more flourishing manufacturing sector is
Speaker 11: by keeping wages as low as possible.
Speaker 9: We've seen that in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 11: Think about the peak era of the US, when we
Speaker 11: had the best manufacturing we've ever had, well that was
Speaker 11: when it was entirely unionized. So it's just not the
Speaker 11: case that it's necessary precondition. In fact, you can argue
Speaker 11: the opposite that oftentimes it's unions because they raise the
Speaker 11: wage ceiling of force companies to have to develop more
Speaker 11: because they can not getting that just by extracting sort
Speaker 11: of superprofits from exploitation. They have to innovate, they have
Speaker 11: to do the things that frankly, our competitors and other.
Speaker 9: Countries are doing.
Speaker 2: We can go ahead and put your article for Jacobin
Speaker 2: on this topic. You you know, you really make the
Speaker 2: cases say union's not just factories will make America grade.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think another piece of this with
Speaker 2: regard to and your answer with regard to, you know,
Speaker 2: labor costs being a comparatively small part of the profitability
Speaker 2: of these companies as well taken. But the other thing
Speaker 2: I think we have to consider is because the US
Speaker 2: has such a barebone social safety net and frankly insane
Speaker 2: healthcare system. It means that you are relying on workers'
Speaker 2: wages to provide everything for them, so you don't have
Speaker 2: a government healthcare system, so that cost is borne somewhe
Speaker 2: by the businesses. You know, housing is extraordinarily expensive, so
Speaker 2: if you want to have a prayer of even getting
Speaker 2: an apartment, you're going to have to earn a certain
Speaker 2: wage as well. So it seems to me like the
Speaker 2: social safety net piece of this has also been missing
Speaker 2: because you know, at the time of peak manufacturing post
Speaker 2: war manufacturing power in the US, which is somewhere around
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three, not only did you have high unionization,
Speaker 2: it was a time period when we were in the
Speaker 2: process of expanding the social safety net through the New
Speaker 2: Deal as well.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and this is one of the ironies of the
Speaker 11: fact that we don't have Medicare for all like we
Speaker 11: should in the United States is that it would actually
Speaker 11: in many ways benefit most big employers, right because it
Speaker 11: would take off these costs that oftentimes they end up
Speaker 11: having to bear, and it would you know, socialize them.
Speaker 11: So this is a reason for having a strong social
Speaker 11: safety net that we don't have. And then just more generally,
Speaker 11: I think your point is well taken, which is that
Speaker 11: you know, it's not just about the union, it's about, frankly,
Speaker 11: what the broader policy environment is to make this stuff happen.
Speaker 11: And one of the really bad aspects of the Trump
Speaker 11: rollout is that it's not real industrial policy.
Speaker 9: Tariffs. Targeted tariffs can work, right.
Speaker 11: Unionization in factories can be boosting productivity, it can be
Speaker 11: conducive towards a flourishing manufacturing economy, but it has to
Speaker 11: take place in a context of an industrial policy that's
Speaker 11: comprehensive that we saw aspects of frankly at its best
Speaker 11: in the early Biden domestic agenda, where there really were
Speaker 11: real incentives from the government to manufacturer in certain like
Speaker 11: key industries. This is the type of thing that you
Speaker 11: need to pair unionization, real industrial policy with tariffs. And
Speaker 11: in the absence of those other background conditions, including a
Speaker 11: stronger welfare state, well then just tariffs on their own
Speaker 11: aren't going to deal what Trump is saying they're going
Speaker 11: to do.
Speaker 3: And can you talk to us a little bit about
Speaker 3: what you've seen from organized labor. I mean, obviously we've
Speaker 3: seen you know, Sean Fain be sort of in the
Speaker 3: media having these conversations in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: There's the big bet from the teamsters over the course
Speaker 3: of the election, and this is, you know, April twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, and here's where we are So what do
Speaker 3: you make of how organized labor has approached Trump? Super
Speaker 3: interesting and complicated figure for them, no question about it.
Speaker 3: But how have they handled this discussion about tariffs just
Speaker 3: in the last let's say, the last month.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, I think I think the UAW is
Speaker 11: in a tricky situation because the UAW is very on
Speaker 11: the record is being opposed to Trump, went really hard
Speaker 11: against Trump, and I think it's to their credit that
Speaker 11: they did and they understood the stakes because frankly, Trump,
Speaker 11: contrary to all of the rhetoric about him being pro worker,
Speaker 11: pro labor, has been the most anti labor president in
Speaker 11: US history. It's certainly recent US history. Just the fact
Speaker 11: of taking away a million union members right to collective
Speaker 11: bargaining overnight through an executive order, this is just, you know,
Speaker 11: this is the type of administration we're dealing with. So
Speaker 11: on the one hand, the UAW sees that and many
Speaker 11: of their own members, because it's not just autoworkers in
Speaker 11: the UAW, they represent researchers and the representing graduate students,
Speaker 11: are being attacked by the Trump administration. At the same time,
Speaker 11: the UAW correctly understands that the free trade you know,
Speaker 11: experiment if you want to call it that, for the
Speaker 11: last three or four decades has been just a total
Speaker 11: disaster for their members. And so in that context, I
Speaker 11: think the UAW has threaded the needle pretty well, which
Speaker 11: is to oppose the overall Trump agenda while saying, yeah,
Speaker 11: targeted tariffs could work. This is frankly different than some
Speaker 11: of the other blue collar unions. You know, I would
Speaker 11: include the team stars there that have really been completely
Speaker 11: uncritical at this point of the administration. I think the
Speaker 11: UAW is walking and showing them at the same time.
Speaker 9: But it's not easy.
Speaker 4: Eric.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you a little bit more specifically
Speaker 2: about your book, which again I highly recommend to people
Speaker 2: where you dig in for you know, this is the
Speaker 2: first book that really does this to these new labor
Speaker 2: organizing movements, whether it's at Amazon and whether it's Starbucks,
Speaker 2: the sort of worker to worker organizing model, and you
Speaker 2: see this as a really hopeful direction for the labor movement,
Speaker 2: even as you know, you have Trump decimating the National
Speaker 2: Labor Relations Board and you know, really, just like you said,
Speaker 2: being the most anti union president that we've had in
Speaker 2: modern history. So do you still see even in this context,
Speaker 2: you know, hopeful developments within the broader labor movement.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I mean, look, the labor movement resurgent hasn't just gone
Speaker 11: away now that Trump got elected.
Speaker 9: We've already seen this.
Speaker 11: Federal workers are organizing all across the US and fighting back.
Speaker 11: There's actually been a surgeon membership in the federal workers
Speaker 11: unions and response to Trump. You know, despite all these sects,
Speaker 11: in many ways, because of them, You've had more workers
Speaker 11: joining the unions in the last three four months than
Speaker 11: joined in the last three or four years combined. So
Speaker 11: in the federal sector, we're seeing that sometimes the boss
Speaker 11: is the best organizers.
Speaker 9: It's old labor saying that's true.
Speaker 11: Sometimes these attacks force people to fight back, and just
Speaker 11: more generally, I would say that even if it's the
Speaker 11: case that a lot of the battles right now are defensive,
Speaker 11: and it's certainly the case, you know, right now we're
Speaker 11: facing an authoritarian takeover. You know, the attacks on federal
Speaker 11: services and unions are really intense. But labor can keep
Speaker 11: up its momentum, and it's starting to if it is
Speaker 11: able to rise to the moment and take a lead
Speaker 11: in defeating these really crucial attacks for all American people.
Speaker 11: You know, it's not just unions. If you destroy federal services,
Speaker 11: how are people going to get their Social Security?
Speaker 9: How are you going to get your medicaid? Right?
Speaker 11: So, these workers are sort of the front edge of
Speaker 11: the spear in fighting for all working people at this point.
Speaker 11: And so if labor is able to win that battle,
Speaker 11: and that's a big if because frankly, most unions are
Speaker 11: at least on the top, extremely risk averse, extremely calcified,
Speaker 11: which is why the energy has come from below. This
Speaker 11: goes back to Sabanda you've thought a lot about, which
Speaker 11: is the teacher strikes in twenty eighteen, you know, starting
Speaker 11: then where the rank and file took the lead, and
Speaker 11: one in you know right to work states, Republican states,
Speaker 11: that show that's possible even under Republican governments, to win
Speaker 11: big if you get the community support. So I think
Speaker 11: that we're going to need to have that energy again
Speaker 11: like we saw in the Red state teacher strikes, and
Speaker 11: that that moment spread to Starbucks, that's spread to Amazon.
Speaker 11: And I think if we're able to defeat Trump around
Speaker 11: these fights right now, that's going to set a huge
Speaker 11: precedent for then going on the offensive to organize the
Speaker 11: Amazons to organize Starbucks, which I think will get their
Speaker 11: first contracts soon.
Speaker 9: There's a lot of potential there.
Speaker 11: There's a lot of young workers who are still angry,
Speaker 11: and there's a lot of anti billionaire sentiment.
Speaker 9: To me, it's actually is.
Speaker 11: Very interesting because if you think about like my normy
Speaker 11: liberal family members, who are you know, now all into
Speaker 11: Bernie and AOC and an anti billionaire. That's the overall
Speaker 11: sentiment of a lot of the base is very anti billionaire.
Speaker 11: And then the question is posed, well, how do you
Speaker 11: beat the billionaires? What's the labor movement? So I think
Speaker 11: there's a lot of political space for continued labor re vitalization.
Speaker 11: It's a question of the unions and if the rank
Speaker 11: and file take advantage.
Speaker 2: Of that moment, Yeah, I think that's that's a great point.
Speaker 2: This was I mean, I guess somewhat of a small gesture,
Speaker 2: but I was really hardened to see the president of
Speaker 2: the sheet metal local that kil Maraabergo Garcia was part
Speaker 2: of come out and call out the Trump administration for
Speaker 2: disappearing him into El Salvador, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: we need to see a lot more of that, And
Speaker 2: you know, it gets into a complicated question of different
Speaker 2: unions have different views of like, you know, we just
Speaker 2: focused on our wages and you know, working conditions right
Speaker 2: here in the here and now, or is this a
Speaker 2: broader movement?
Speaker 5: But the way you put it, I think.
Speaker 2: Is very apt that there has been a real sort
Speaker 2: of radicalization of normy liberal Democrats and you see that
Speaker 2: in a variety please watching MSNBC, and Nicole Wallace is
Speaker 2: out here sounding like you know me in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: So it certainly creates an opportunity I think for labor
Speaker 2: if they can, if they can seize the moment. Eric,
Speaker 2: tell people where they can follow you and where they
Speaker 2: can buy your book, which again highly recommend to everybody.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 11: The best place to follow me is probably at my substack,
Speaker 11: Labor Politics.
Speaker 9: You just go Labor politics dot com. You can sign
Speaker 9: up there and yeah, get a copy of the book
Speaker 9: We Are the Union. You can get it anywhere online
Speaker 9: or in person. Yeah, and again thanks for having me
Speaker 9: on it.
Speaker 11: And I'll just say, if you're out there and you
Speaker 11: want to get involved in fighting background the federal workers,
Speaker 11: you should go to Save Public Services dot com. There's
Speaker 11: a growing movement to support them. And if you are
Speaker 11: a worker who's not in a union, you should organize
Speaker 11: your workplace and the way to do that is you
Speaker 11: go to worker Organizing dot org. Sign up and you'll
Speaker 11: get support for organizing a workplace today.
Speaker 5: Amazing. Thanks Eric, It's always great to see you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: Well defend Stuckert. Pete Hegseeth is still under fire. He
Speaker 3: gave an interview to Fox and Friends. We covered some
Speaker 3: of it yesterday morning, just as we were reacting in
Speaker 3: real time as it had recently happened. But there's so
Speaker 3: much more to get to, including I think a real
Speaker 3: bombshell from Ryan and drop site about what's going on
Speaker 3: behind the scenes at the Pentagon. This report explains a lot,
Speaker 3: but let's start with this clip from Pete HeiG Seth
Speaker 3: on Fox and Friends yesterday morning, trying to defend himself
Speaker 3: amidst all of these firings.
Speaker 12: That's why we've I've fought for the budget that the
Speaker 12: Defense Department requires, and the presidents said, we'll have our
Speaker 12: first trillion dollar budget because my kids, my fourteen year old,
Speaker 12: if he joins, he's going to have a great military,
Speaker 12: he's going to have peace through strength because of the
Speaker 12: historic investments of this president. So no, I haven't blinked
Speaker 12: and I won't blink because this job is too big
Speaker 12: and too important for the American people. And I'm grateful
Speaker 12: for every opportunity the President has given him.
Speaker 6: And I was grateful to see the heg that Seth
Speaker 6: army on the Easter egg roll yesterday in the backdrop
Speaker 6: they are ready to go.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Pete HeiG Seth went on Fox and Friends
Speaker 3: to defend himself amidst what we've been covering here. It's
Speaker 3: a major story, all of these terminations of his very
Speaker 3: very close staff, people who have been around him for
Speaker 3: a long time, just in recent days over allegations.
Speaker 4: Of a leak.
Speaker 3: So one of the things we covered here yesterday just
Speaker 3: to catch up if you didn't see the addition of
Speaker 3: breaking points yesterday, is that Dan Caldwell. Again, this is
Speaker 3: a very senior advisor to Pete Hegseth, someone who's.
Speaker 4: Been around him.
Speaker 3: I think, going back to their concern veterans for America days,
Speaker 3: really long time, Dan is terminated, walked out of the
Speaker 3: Pentagon along with another guy who's been around heg Seth
Speaker 3: for a long time, pretty high up in the circles
Speaker 3: at the Pentagon these.
Speaker 4: Days, I think the total comes to like.
Speaker 3: Five major departures, one of which Juliot is sort of
Speaker 3: anti Hegseth, and more and Concamp, but just around Hegseth himself,
Speaker 3: four people who are sort of allies to him have
Speaker 3: left the Pentagon recently. Caldwell then goes on Tucker Carlson's
Speaker 3: show says he absolutely did not leak.
Speaker 4: He has no idea if there is.
Speaker 3: An investigation into a leak. And then Ryan comes out
Speaker 3: at drop site with the story that I think blew
Speaker 3: this wide open yesterday, Crystal. So let's put the next
Speaker 3: element up on the screen. So what Ryan is reporting
Speaker 3: basically is that, I mean, it's the narrative itself, and
Speaker 3: Ryan's writing is so good, but this is just an
Speaker 3: insane story. But what happened basically is that, let me
Speaker 3: summarize it this way. The paranoia about being caught leaking
Speaker 3: at the Pentagon is so strong that people are getting
Speaker 3: falsely accused of leaking because there's such a freak out
Speaker 3: about whether or not anybody is leaking. So think of
Speaker 3: it like this, and just to go through Ryan's story quickly.
Speaker 3: So on April, Star Calling Carol gets a phone call
Speaker 3: and it is from Dan Littman. So Politico reporter Dan Littman,
Speaker 3: who had recently written a story kind of a hit
Speaker 3: piece on Carol, calling him a quote bad boss. I
Speaker 3: don't mean hit piece in necessarily a pejorative way, but
Speaker 3: it was negative negatives. Yeah, exactly. So Carol texts Dan
Speaker 3: Caldwell to tell him about this call with Litman. Litman
Speaker 3: had asked if Joe Casper was facing an investigation by
Speaker 3: an IG and he wanted to know if Carol could
Speaker 3: confirm that. So you have a reporter calling someone at
Speaker 3: the Pensagon and saying, hey, do you know about Joe
Speaker 3: Casper being under investigation?
Speaker 4: So he then texts Caldwell being like, what do I
Speaker 4: do with this?
Speaker 3: I don't want to be accused of leaking like that
Speaker 3: is the fear, and says I just had a political
Speaker 3: reporter call me and asked a comment on an ongoing
Speaker 3: IG and criminal in messation the Casper I told him
Speaker 3: no comment. Same reporter that did a hit piece on
Speaker 3: me two weeks ago for getting fired for bad leadership
Speaker 3: last time around. I feel like I should report this
Speaker 3: call to someone, but not sure who.
Speaker 4: Given the leak and disclosure stuff.
Speaker 3: This is an amazing signal message that Ryan has in
Speaker 3: the story. Ryan's sourcing here is just incredible. Called Well
Speaker 3: replies flag it for your PAO, and then Sean Parnell,
Speaker 3: who does comms at the Pentagon, so that all happens,
Speaker 3: and basically then Carol Caldwell and the deputy chief of
Speaker 3: Staff Darren Selnik get marched out of the Pentagon and
Speaker 3: subsequently fired and accused of leaking information. So Crystal this
Speaker 3: story again, it is insane. It is like ripped from
Speaker 3: an episode of Veep. But the takeaway here is they're
Speaker 3: so paranoid about being caught leaking that even when they're
Speaker 3: not leaking, they're getting accused of leaking.
Speaker 4: Even when they're paranoid, when they're trying.
Speaker 3: To cover all of their bases, they're still being in
Speaker 3: case of leaking.
Speaker 2: So just basically their association with this political reporter and
Speaker 2: the fact that they surface this created this impression of oh,
Speaker 2: you're leaking, and you're trying to sabotage Joe Casper in particular,
Speaker 2: so he and it also feels like Casper, there's all
Speaker 2: kinds of stories down about him. At this point, he
Speaker 2: seems like, you know, a real will just say wild card.
Speaker 2: Apparently he's in high level meetings bringing up exploits at
Speaker 2: strip clubs, announcing to everybody that he's just taken a
Speaker 2: giant shit Like that's the level of leadership that we're
Speaker 2: talking about from that dude in particular. But it seems
Speaker 2: like he was also looking for a pretext to fire
Speaker 2: a knife some of these people. So then when they
Speaker 2: get associated inadvertently with this political reporter and this potential
Speaker 2: leak coming out of the Inspector Generals with regard to
Speaker 2: Joe Casper, he potentially sees this as an opening of like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is how I'm going to get these guys out
Speaker 2: of here. So some of this is just complete insanity
Speaker 2: and paranoia, you know, very poor leadership in terms of
Speaker 2: Pete hegg Sath clearly like that's just undeniable at this point.
Speaker 2: Some of it is potentially ideological. That's the piece that
Speaker 2: we don't really know, And it sort of doesn't matter
Speaker 2: whether it's ideological or not, because the end result is
Speaker 2: that you've got Dan Caldwell out, who was a really
Speaker 2: important voice for you know, restraint with regard to Iran
Speaker 2: and not going along with Israel and what they want
Speaker 2: the United States to do. So whether or not it's ideological,
Speaker 2: it has an ideological impact. And then some of this
Speaker 2: just seems like, you know, people who don't like each
Speaker 2: other in turf wars and like kind of bureaucratic bullshit
Speaker 2: run amuck because you have such a weak and ineffectual
Speaker 2: and chaotic leader in the person of Pete Heggsath.
Speaker 3: So Carolyn Levitt was asked about this d yesterday at
Speaker 3: the White House briefing. Let's roll clip not I should
Speaker 3: say she wasn't asked about the drop site story. I
Speaker 3: don't think it had come out by the time the
Speaker 3: briefing happened. But let's take a look at her answers
Speaker 3: to questions about Pete Heigseth.
Speaker 4: I have two.
Speaker 13: Questions, one on the Pentagon and another on the economy.
Speaker 13: You said on Fox News that the entire Pentagon is
Speaker 13: working against Secretary HeiG Sith.
Speaker 5: But the people who were fired were.
Speaker 4: Heikesa's own guy. So how do.
Speaker 13: You square that and what do you say to concerns
Speaker 13: that that's bad management?
Speaker 14: They were Pentagon employees who leaked against their boss to
Speaker 14: news agencies in this room, and it's been clear since
Speaker 14: day one from this administration that we are not going
Speaker 14: to tolerate individuals who leaked to the mainstream media, particularly
Speaker 14: when it comes to sensitive information. And the Secretary of
Speaker 14: Defense is doing a tremendous job, and he is bringing
Speaker 14: monumental change to the Pentagon, and there's a lot of
Speaker 14: people in the city who reject my fumental change, and
Speaker 14: I think, frankly, that's why we've seen a smear campaign
Speaker 14: against the Secretary of Defense since the moment that President
Speaker 14: Trump announced his nomination before the United States Senate. Let
Speaker 14: me reiterate, the President stands strongly behind Secretary Heigseth in
Speaker 14: the change that he is bringing to the Pentagon and
Speaker 14: the results that he's achieved thus far speak for themselves.
Speaker 3: And christ Lo, I want to bring up this New
Speaker 3: York Times rundown that published yesterday because it gets to
Speaker 3: the points you made about Joe Casper, some of the
Speaker 3: allegations about how he conducts himself at the Pentagon, bringing
Speaker 3: up conversations about strip clubs and then.
Speaker 5: The literal shit show.
Speaker 3: Apparently, this New York Times story has all kinds of
Speaker 3: details from behind the scenes, but Joe Casper, Heike Seth
Speaker 3: has stood behind. And what's very interesting about that is
Speaker 3: the question that I believe that was Dasha Burns just
Speaker 3: asked Caroline Love.
Speaker 4: It's as though there has been.
Speaker 3: A wedge driven between Haigs's own allies side the Pentagon.
Speaker 3: And if you are Pete Heigseth, and I'm just speaking hypothetically,
Speaker 3: you come into the Pentagon hypothetically and sort of charitably
Speaker 3: like say you're you're Pete Hegseth. You have these goals
Speaker 3: that you want to accomplish at the Pentagon. You really
Speaker 3: want to do some reform, whatever that reform is. You
Speaker 3: let's just say, want to bust up a status quo
Speaker 3: that has been around for a long time.
Speaker 4: And it is very hard to disrupt.
Speaker 3: What's very predictable is that these sort of forces that
Speaker 3: you're trying to reform and disrupt are going to drive
Speaker 3: a wedge between yourself and your allies. Because again we
Speaker 3: talked about this when Heike Seth was first nominated. Basically nobody,
Speaker 3: even in the private sector, has the experience that you
Speaker 3: need to be the Defense secretary because it's.
Speaker 4: Such a vast.
Speaker 3: Job. It's your oversight is just over such a vast
Speaker 3: swath of the economy of the sort of global security apparatus.
Speaker 4: It's a really really difficult job.
Speaker 3: And even if you lad concerned vets uh and you
Speaker 3: know you're a Fox of Friends host, it just there's
Speaker 3: nothing that can prepare you, whether you're that or you're
Speaker 3: Jamie Diamond, Like, nothing can prepare you for what's going
Speaker 3: to happen at the Pentagon, let alone if you want
Speaker 3: to reform it. So I think some of this Crystal
Speaker 3: is really like bad faith neo conservative defenders of the
Speaker 3: status quo trying very hard to push Heg Seth out
Speaker 3: and replace him with somebody who's more along the lines
Speaker 3: of like a Mike Waltz or a Mike Pompeo. So,
Speaker 3: I you know, as as wild as the sort of
Speaker 3: or let's just say, as unorthodox as HeiG Seth is
Speaker 3: as a defense secretary.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think some of this.
Speaker 3: Is just like the predictable machinations of the neo conservative
Speaker 3: blob that operates inside of the Pentagon, and it was
Speaker 3: always going to happen, and that's I mean, it's sort
Speaker 3: of It's a very difficult job. And as much as
Speaker 3: like hag Seth has made some pretty obvious mistakes, signal
Speaker 3: Gate being the clearest man.
Speaker 4: This is this is a mess.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, I don't know what. It doesn't
Speaker 3: make me feel great about what's happening at the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make you feel great, doesn't make me feel great, Crystal.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm going back to the first clip where
Speaker 2: you played, where he's like bragging, my, oh, we're gonna
Speaker 2: have a trillion dollar defense budget. It's like, Okay, where's
Speaker 2: the grave, where's the big break with the status quo?
Speaker 2: You know, I get it. He talked about DEI and
Speaker 2: Wokeness a lot, and you know, you wanted.
Speaker 3: To get rid of like a bunch of those guys,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, like the generals that have
Speaker 3: been along around for a really long time.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, but now we're just like reinflating the budget
Speaker 2: and making it bigger than ever. So I you know,
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm not all that sympathetic to the narrative
Speaker 2: that he really is, that he has really had this
Speaker 2: grand evolution in terms of his ideology and his really
Speaker 2: pushing in a different direction than what we've seen before
Speaker 2: in terms of fighting wars, you know, endlessly around the world.
Speaker 2: I just don't think that he I think he is
Speaker 2: an ambitious guy. I think you know, when it was
Speaker 2: the thing to do to get ahead to be in
Speaker 2: favor of the Iraq war, he did that. When it
Speaker 2: was the thing to do to get ahead to be
Speaker 2: in favor of the Ukraine War, he did that. When
Speaker 2: it was the thing to do to get ahead to
Speaker 2: turn on the Ukraine War, he did that. And now
Speaker 2: he's going to do whatever Trump wants him to do.
Speaker 2: That's how I ultimately.
Speaker 4: He's not going to push back on Trump.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, we know that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, he saw it in the Signal
Speaker 2: Gate in the chats that we all got access to.
Speaker 2: And then I don't know if we've covered on the
Speaker 2: show or not, there is another signal Gate controversy now
Speaker 2: where he was including his wife and his brother with
Speaker 2: this sensitive information that had been shared with him. We
Speaker 2: know it was classified because it was shared with him
Speaker 2: from a general who shared it through the proper classified channels,
Speaker 2: so you know. And the reason to share these things
Speaker 2: a signal is because you can evade any sort of
Speaker 2: government transparency. That's the reason they do this. They never
Speaker 2: said they were going to stop using signal and I'm
Speaker 2: sure they've continued to use it routinely, et cetera.
Speaker 5: And you know, there is like.
Speaker 2: A basic level if if you okay, let's let's take
Speaker 2: seriously the idea he's a revolutionary, really wants to change
Speaker 2: the direction of the Pentagon, et cetera, et cetera. Like
Speaker 2: that does mean to your point that you need to
Speaker 2: be even more locked down, competent, you know, efficient, like
Speaker 2: all of it versus this you know, chaos, paranoia mess
Speaker 2: that has apparently been fomented at the Pentagon. So if
Speaker 2: you want to do some sort of revolutionary action, you
Speaker 2: better have all of your ducks in a row, because
Speaker 2: of course, the you know, the neocons and the people
Speaker 2: that are going that are in the entrench status quo
Speaker 2: are going to be coming for you, and you can
Speaker 2: bet that they are organized.
Speaker 5: So you know, I, I.
Speaker 2: Personally don't give a lot credence to the narrative about
Speaker 2: his big ideological shift, but even if you do, that
Speaker 2: makes it even more important that he be a hyper
Speaker 2: competent person. And there was never any evidence of that, frankly,
Speaker 2: never any evidence of that. There were mismanagement problems that
Speaker 2: his you know, concerned vets organization. Being a Fox and
Speaker 2: Friends weekend host like doesn't require you to manage personnel whatsoever.
Speaker 5: And so the the short.
Speaker 2: Falls in terms of his basic level of leadership and
Speaker 2: competence are even more important if he is trying to
Speaker 2: truly do something different here.
Speaker 3: And let's we can put the last almond on the screen,
Speaker 3: because this gets to the point that you're making about
Speaker 3: to what extent Pete Heike Seth is able or willing
Speaker 3: or interested in reforming the Pentagon. Donald Trump posted on
Speaker 3: True Social yesterday quote, I've just spoken to Prime Minister
Speaker 3: of Israel Bibi and Yahoo relative to numerous subjects, including
Speaker 3: train trade, iran, et cetera.
Speaker 4: The call went very well.
Speaker 3: We are on the same side of every issue.
Speaker 5: Now cool, great, love that Chris issue.
Speaker 3: And this speaks to how serious I guess the tensions
Speaker 3: or the because what is genuinely different or was genuinely
Speaker 3: different about Haig seth Pentagon is that he surrounded himself
Speaker 3: with people like Dan uh. Dan Caldwell is somebody who
Speaker 3: would look at that True Social post and say, this
Speaker 3: is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: We're on the same side of every issue.
Speaker 3: This is a huge problem with American foreign policy and
Speaker 3: for a Republican or Democrat administration frankly to have deep
Speaker 3: skeptics of the US foreign policy establishment, especially as it
Speaker 3: pertains to the Middle East, especially it pertains to Russia
Speaker 3: in such a senior role.
Speaker 4: That was genuinely.
Speaker 3: Different, and it was you know, whether it would have
Speaker 3: translated into massive substantive differences. I mean, we saw this
Speaker 3: on the signal Gate chat itself when jd Vance pushed
Speaker 3: back a little bit. It was Pete Hedseth who jumped
Speaker 3: in and made the argument on behalf of trump Ism
Speaker 3: basically for the UTI strike. And so whether it would
Speaker 3: have translated down the line into big substantive differences, we
Speaker 3: don't know. The early signs suggested that it wouldn't. But
Speaker 3: this is the sort of like classic Trumpian dilemma or
Speaker 3: not dilemma. But one of the big questions is whether
Speaker 3: his I guess, stylistic gestures that he's willing to make
Speaker 3: on things like organized labor, with Chavez, Drimer being in
Speaker 3: support of the Proacer, formerly being supported the pro Act,
Speaker 3: all of these different things, do they ever translate into
Speaker 3: sort of substantive or trade war for example, Does he
Speaker 3: end up going like blinking on these tariffs and you know,
Speaker 3: pissing off Wall Street so much that he ends up
Speaker 3: playcating Wall Street like these we just don't you never,
Speaker 3: you never have a good sense of how serious he
Speaker 3: is about actually reforming the status quo. And in this case,
Speaker 3: the potential reformers have been pushed out the door.
Speaker 4: What's three months into the administration?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean yeah, bottom line, this goes again
Speaker 2: to you know how much Pete Hegseeth really cares about
Speaker 2: going in some different direction. He fired maybe the best
Speaker 2: guy that he had around him on these issues, the
Speaker 2: best voice against war with Iran, One of the best
Speaker 2: was Dan Caldwell, and Pete Hegseth is the guy that
Speaker 2: fired him. So you know, what are we to make
Speaker 2: of how committed he is to a different ideological direction.
Speaker 2: And you know, these things matter because Trump can be
Speaker 2: very impressionable, Yes, you know, you see that certainly in
Speaker 2: the tariff fight, where Bessen and Lutnik realize that they
Speaker 2: if they can get Peter Navarro on the other side
Speaker 2: of the White House and some other meeting, they can
Speaker 2: come in and they can you know, make their case
Speaker 2: and they can effectuate some sort of action just from
Speaker 2: them being there. And Peter Navarro not being there. So
Speaker 2: that's why it is very consequential who is who is
Speaker 2: in the room. And to see that tweet from Trump saying, oh,
Speaker 2: We're on the same side of every issue with Israel
Speaker 2: like that, it's just it's just so preposterous. We should
Speaker 2: not be on the same side of every issue of
Speaker 2: any country in the whole world, like the whole idea
Speaker 2: of America versus you have your own interests, right, And
Speaker 2: that's the kind of the polar opposite of what is
Speaker 2: being conveyed in Sweeten is deeply troubling because obviously Israel
Speaker 2: wants us and has long wanted US in a war
Speaker 2: with Iran, even though many of even Mike Waltz acknowledged that,
Speaker 2: you know, it was it would be a risky gambit
Speaker 2: to try to take out Iranian nuclear facilities through military means. So,
Speaker 2: you know, you have a lot of Americans who realize
Speaker 2: that this would be a bad direction. But that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that you aren't going to have you know, you
Speaker 2: aren't going to have a lack of patience for Trump
Speaker 2: to pursue the diplomatic process. And at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, the neocons be able to catch him in
Speaker 2: a moment when you know whoever is a voice of
Speaker 2: reason is on the other side of the of the
Speaker 2: White House and persuade him into taking really dangerous and
Speaker 2: horrifying action.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think your point about the importance of having people
Speaker 3: in the room who are skeptics or kind of heater
Speaker 3: docs on these questions is really really well taken and important.
Speaker 3: Let's go check in on the MAHA movement, Crystal, because
Speaker 3: there's some developments we should talk about. Yesterday it was
Speaker 3: a pretty big announcement on food die. We have stuff
Speaker 3: to talk about when it comes to milk inspections. Let's
Speaker 3: start with this this clip of Robert F. Kennedy Junior,
Speaker 3: who's obviously Secretary of Health and Human Services. This was
Speaker 3: this was a clip that came out last week. We're
Speaker 3: going to get into the new developments this week. But
Speaker 3: the clip that came out last week when RFK Junior
Speaker 3: was speaking about autism, we want to start with because
Speaker 3: it went really viral and was was really polarizing, polarized
Speaker 3: had had some polarized reactions that we'll talk about, but
Speaker 3: we could go ahead to roll the clip first. This
Speaker 3: is RFK Junior speaking on autism last week.
Speaker 7: This is an individual tragedy as well. Autism destroys families.
Speaker 7: More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which are our children.
Speaker 7: These are children who should not be who should not
Speaker 7: be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them,
Speaker 7: were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure
Speaker 7: into autism when they're two years old. And these are
Speaker 7: kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job,
Speaker 7: they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll
Speaker 7: never go out on a date. Many of them will
Speaker 7: never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize
Speaker 7: we are doing this to our children. I mean, in
Speaker 7: your direction.
Speaker 9: We are going to know by September.
Speaker 7: We've launched a massive u testing and research effort that's
Speaker 7: going to involve hundreds of sciencests from around the world.
Speaker 7: By September, we will know what has caused the autism
Speaker 7: an epidemic and will be able to eliminate those exposures.
Speaker 3: This comes as news actually broke yesterday.
Speaker 4: This is D two.
Speaker 3: We can put on the screen that this big autism
Speaker 3: study that he is trying to wrap up, I believe
Speaker 3: by August is amassing medical records of many Americans. As
Speaker 3: the CBS headline puts it quote, the new data will
Speaker 3: allow external researchers picked for Kennedy's autism studies to study
Speaker 3: comprehensive patient data with broad coverage of.
Speaker 4: The US population for the first time.
Speaker 3: NIH director doctor j Batcharia said the idea of the
Speaker 3: platform is that the existing data resources are often fragmented
Speaker 3: and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will often pay
Speaker 3: multiple times for the same data resource. Even data resources
Speaker 3: that are within the federal government are difficult to obtain,
Speaker 3: he said in a presentation to the agency's advisor.
Speaker 4: CBS goes on a note.
Speaker 3: That medication records from pharmacy chains, lab testing and genomics,
Speaker 3: data from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs
Speaker 3: and Indian Health Service, claims from private insurers, and data
Speaker 3: from smart watches and fitness trackers.
Speaker 4: Will all be linked together.
Speaker 3: So Crystal, that's On the one hand, it's sort of like,
Speaker 3: if you're doing these studies, yes, you should be getting
Speaker 3: as much data as you possibly can.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, it sounds like.
Speaker 3: What the government is doing is correlating data that can
Speaker 3: be bought from third parties. So if we're talking about
Speaker 3: smart watches, fitness stuff, there are serious efforts to ban
Speaker 3: that the government being able to buy that data, because
Speaker 3: then the government is able because I mean, you can
Speaker 3: buy it like a private people can buy that data.
Speaker 3: Should the government be able to buy it is a
Speaker 3: different question, But the government's argument is that, well, if
Speaker 3: you can buy it in the marketplace, why should the
Speaker 3: government be at a disadvantage to sort of have access
Speaker 3: to it. So it's not the clearest cut question in
Speaker 3: the world, but is always creepy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're creating a national registry of people with autism, Like,
Speaker 2: it's very creepy, and then collating all of this data
Speaker 2: together allegedly. I mean, this is some of what DOGE
Speaker 2: is doing in other departments as well, putting together this
Speaker 2: like mass federal government database of every characteristic, every interaction
Speaker 2: you've ever had with the government. And I think people
Speaker 2: are right to be uncomfortable with that, you know, going
Speaker 2: back to RFK Junior's like, if you're autistic, you'll never
Speaker 2: play baseball, you'll never go.
Speaker 5: On a date. The one that's jumped down to meze
Speaker 5: he said, you'll.
Speaker 2: Never pay taxes, Like is that a shot at elon
Speaker 2: Musk not really paying taxes because I'm just saying, I'm like,
Speaker 2: you do know that the most powerful man in government
Speaker 2: outside of Donald Trump is autistic?
Speaker 15: Right?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 5: Are you aware of that?
Speaker 4: Probably?
Speaker 2: You know would I would wager probably significant number of
Speaker 2: the Doge Packer apparatics may also share that diagnosis. So
Speaker 2: I just when you hear comments like that, you're like,
Speaker 2: do you not recognize the very basics of this thing
Speaker 2: that you claim to take such interest in? Because clearly
Speaker 2: it's a broad spectrum of people with many varied capabilities,
Speaker 2: and yes, some are more profoundly impacted than others. So
Speaker 2: it again speaks to me to a just ignorance on
Speaker 2: the basics of a topic that he purports to have
Speaker 2: a deep interest and you know, supposed expertise in. And
Speaker 2: there's a lot that's really concerning about the way that
Speaker 2: he's going about this whole study. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 2: he's already decided he thinks vaccines cause autism. We all
Speaker 2: know that, we also know that that is not the case.
Speaker 2: The primary study that you know, purported to show that
Speaker 2: was thoroughly discredited. This he's got involved in this study.
Speaker 2: This guy David Giery's a vaccine skeptic. He was fine
Speaker 2: for practicing medicine with analycense. He's known for retracted papers
Speaker 2: linking vaccines to autism. So that's the other question is
Speaker 2: if they're basically just like cooking the books to get
Speaker 2: the answer that he believes, whether it's you know, vaccines
Speaker 2: are some sort of other environmental you know, toxin factor.
Speaker 2: And I think it's great to research and learn more
Speaker 2: and really test the case of whether it is truly
Speaker 2: that there's you know, a greater diagnostic awareness and that's
Speaker 2: why we have a you know, a larger percentage of
Speaker 2: people who are autistic. Is that really true? Is there
Speaker 2: something else going on? But you also can't just discard
Speaker 2: all of the research and the science that has been
Speaker 2: done before, including research into significant genetic factors. He calls
Speaker 2: autism like an injury, Like it's something specific in the environment,
Speaker 2: whether it's vaccines or toxins that have been done to you.
Speaker 2: But there's tons of research to show like if you
Speaker 2: have a real genetic component, if you have someone else
Speaker 2: in your family who's autistic, you're much more likely to
Speaker 2: yourself be autistic. You can't just ignore that and pretend
Speaker 2: that doesn't exist. So I mean, this is my issue
Speaker 2: with him. I just I think he's dishonest. I think
Speaker 2: he's a crank, and I also think he's incredibly poorly informed,
Speaker 2: as is evidenced by you know him thinking that people
Speaker 2: who are autistic, none of them can play baseball or
Speaker 2: go on a date or use the bathroom by themselves.
Speaker 3: It was so there were some groups that represent the
Speaker 3: interests of people with autism who took issue with what
Speaker 3: he said because of their argument is that it stigmatizes
Speaker 3: people with autism. Yeah, and you know, this is the
Speaker 3: sort of trouble with RFK Junior is similar from my
Speaker 3: perspective also to what happens with HeiG Seth. It's like
Speaker 3: there's there's something really serious that they get right, which
Speaker 3: is these like structural problems with the agencies that they've
Speaker 3: been tapped to lead and with the culture of the
Speaker 3: industries that the agencies are supposed to oversee. Then the
Speaker 3: problem is those what does that mean in terms of
Speaker 3: like the policy execution. Mass data collection is not my
Speaker 3: favorite thing, whether it's private companies or the government do
Speaker 3: doing it. So this is Jay Baticharia. I've interviewed him.
Speaker 3: He's great. I really like Ja bodicharia. But the description
Speaker 3: of this database is definitely troubling. They want to use
Speaker 3: it for more than just research into autism. They want
Speaker 3: to have a pretty broad, comprehensive database that they can
Speaker 3: use to study other health issues. And they're promising protections
Speaker 3: for privacy. I've heard that many times before and deeply
Speaker 3: suspicious of it. While we're actually talking about badicharia, I
Speaker 3: just want to mention the Lefong story from yesterday as well.
Speaker 3: You can go read it on Lee's substack, But basically
Speaker 3: that nih was making Grant's contingent on people not getting
Speaker 3: involved with BDS, like, yeah, you can. You can look
Speaker 3: at the new policy and it has some stuff that
Speaker 3: I fully support about because like my take on this
Speaker 3: is that DEI violates civil rights law and we don't
Speaker 3: have to necessarily agree on that. But they put in
Speaker 3: this poison pill about BDS into this basically new policy,
Speaker 3: saying that you can't be discriminating on the basis of
Speaker 3: race in the name of DEI. But then they toss
Speaker 3: in a description essentially that's that's BDS and compare it
Speaker 3: to racism, and it's just some of the stuff is
Speaker 3: so frustrating.
Speaker 2: I mean, he said he was going to use AHHS
Speaker 2: to combat anti Semitism, like it yeah, whuich he likened
Speaker 2: to like, you know, a greenhouse guest. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's just it's I don't think anyone really asked him. Well,
Speaker 2: I know there were some people who asked him, but
Speaker 2: I don't think that the MAHA movement was looking for
Speaker 2: him to weaponize the HHS in a hyper woke fashion
Speaker 2: to combat this alleged scourge of anti Semitism.
Speaker 5: And you're right.
Speaker 2: I mean, the reason why an RFK junior can rise
Speaker 2: to such prominence is because people recognize, of course they're
Speaker 2: are big issue. There's you know, obviously big issues with
Speaker 2: our food supply that is making us sick. We obviously
Speaker 2: have a system that is set up to keep people
Speaker 2: chronically ill because that is profitable. I mean, that's really
Speaker 2: the core of it is. You have, whether it's big
Speaker 2: food or whether it's big pharma, they profit off of
Speaker 2: people being chronically ill. But none of that is actually
Speaker 2: in the analysis of what he is trying to accomplish
Speaker 2: at HHS, Like none of the you know, going after
Speaker 2: making sure you know, whether you want to nationalize big
Speaker 2: farm or whether you want to push for medicare for all,
Speaker 2: to take the profit motive out of these things. None
Speaker 2: of that is really there. And so even you know,
Speaker 2: he's announced this effort, which I support, to get some
Speaker 2: of these food dies which are there is some research
Speaker 2: to suggest can be you know, can can be negatively
Speaker 2: impactful to kids in particular. And so look, if there's
Speaker 2: a question, just yes, take it out. I'm all for
Speaker 2: that absolutely. But even with this, it's like a voluntary program,
Speaker 2: and if food companies feel like it, whatever, So let's
Speaker 2: go and take a listen. This is D three to
Speaker 2: RFK talking about getting these food dyes out of our
Speaker 2: food supply chain.
Speaker 16: Hey, the FDA is taking action to remove petroleum based
Speaker 16: food dyes from the US food supply and from medications.
Speaker 9: For the last fifty years.
Speaker 16: American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup
Speaker 16: of synthetic chemicals. The scientific community has conducted a number
Speaker 16: of studies raising concerns about the correlation between petroleum based
Speaker 16: synthetic dyes and several health conditions.
Speaker 7: We are spending as much on mitochondrial disorders like diabetes
Speaker 7: as we spend on our military budget. We can't continue
Speaker 7: to exist like this. And you know the problem is
Speaker 7: industry is making money. I'm keeping us sick.
Speaker 9: And these are a.
Speaker 7: Broad category, the ones that Marti mentioned like ADHD, neurological
Speaker 7: disorders add ADHD, speech delayed language delay, TICS to red syndrome,
Speaker 7: and arcolepsy, ASD, and autism. All of these are injuries
Speaker 7: that I never heard of when I was a kid.
Speaker 7: They were not part of the nomenclature, They weren't part
Speaker 7: of the dialogue. There was zero spent in this country
Speaker 7: treating chronic disease when my uncle was president. Today is
Speaker 7: about one point eight trillion dollars annually. Is bankrupting our nation.
Speaker 7: Seventy four percent of American kids cannot qualify for military service.
Speaker 7: How are we going to maintain our global leadership with
Speaker 7: such a sick population. We have all these autoimmune disease,
Speaker 7: these exotic diseases, and again I never heard of juvenile diabetes,
Speaker 7: rheumatoid arthritis, loupis, Crohn's disease, and one hundred others that
Speaker 7: were just unknown when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: And I mean again, it's like part of this is
Speaker 2: correct about definitely the you know, obesity and chronic illness,
Speaker 2: et cetera, and then part of it is just like complete,
Speaker 2: you know, ill informed bullshit of these you know, various
Speaker 2: illnesses that he describes again as injuries. It's trying to
Speaker 2: indicate that these are all, you know, environmentally caused or
Speaker 2: vaccine cause or whatever that he never heard of when
Speaker 2: he was a kid. Well, I mean, you could go
Speaker 2: through each one of them. But some of them it
Speaker 2: was because they used a different word for it. Some
Speaker 2: of them is because, you know, I mean, some of
Speaker 2: these things that he says he never heard of had
Speaker 2: been identified in the late eighteen hundreds, et cetera. But
Speaker 2: you know, I think the effort to get these food
Speaker 2: dies out is a good effort. But we could put
Speaker 2: the next peace up on the screen. Like I said,
Speaker 2: it's completely voluntary to the food companies. And I also
Speaker 2: don't think we should delude ourselves about like this is
Speaker 2: not going to change the health status of Americans. You
Speaker 2: need a much more rev plutionary program that actually attacks
Speaker 2: the central problem, which is the profit motive. And you know,
Speaker 2: they've got the head of the USDA is a freaking
Speaker 2: seed oil lobbyists. So I'm just you know, and at
Speaker 2: the same time, Emily, the other piece of this is
Speaker 2: most of the and that the seed oil lobbyist things
Speaker 2: speaks to the fact that most of the Trump administration
Speaker 2: is running a million miles and the other direction of
Speaker 2: like giving chemical companies and polluters everything they want. And
Speaker 2: Doge has gutted the FDA so they can't even properly
Speaker 2: regulate our food supply at all. I mean they were
Speaker 2: already incredibly stretched thin, so it was difficult for them
Speaker 2: to be able to, you know, make sure that what
Speaker 2: we eat is safe. But if we put D five
Speaker 2: up on the screen, this is great reporting from lever
Speaker 2: News about industry getting a big win here. The Trump
Speaker 2: administration hid data that allows communities to know about dangerous
Speaker 2: chemical facilities in their midst comes after lobbying from the
Speaker 2: chemical industry and after massive inauguration donations from chemical companies.
Speaker 5: We can put up D six about milk.
Speaker 2: So they are halting milk quality tests at the FDA
Speaker 2: amid workforce cuts. So thank you Doge for making it.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's not like there's like an avian
Speaker 2: flu that we're worried about passing through a milk supply
Speaker 2: right now or anything. So this is this is not
Speaker 2: all that you know, I guess this is not all
Speaker 2: that important, making sure that the milk supply is safe
Speaker 2: and sufficient, and then put this last one up on
Speaker 2: the screen. They're also set to cancel tens of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars in grants from the EPA to scientists studying
Speaker 2: the environmental hazards faced by kids in rural America, the
Speaker 2: harms of pesticide exposure, and preventing forever chemicals from contaminating
Speaker 2: the food supply. So, you know, I don't know what
Speaker 2: I don't know what administration he's talking about when he,
Speaker 2: you know, thinks that we're going to be getting the
Speaker 2: toxins out of the food supply and whatever, because the
Speaker 2: the doge efforts, the overall Trump administration coziness with business
Speaker 2: has meant that some of the small things that the
Speaker 2: Biden Ministry, small steps that they took with regard to
Speaker 2: forever chemicals in particular, are being rolled back a million
Speaker 2: miles per hour by this administration and making it so
Speaker 2: that we can't even know whether there are toxic chemicals
Speaker 2: anymore in our own communities.
Speaker 3: You know, the Obama administration initially considered RFK Junior to
Speaker 3: head up the EPA, And this is what's actually and
Speaker 3: by the way, you've seen as.
Speaker 4: Too much of a liability to the Obama administration.
Speaker 3: Because he's been always kind of on the fringes of
Speaker 3: the left. And that's what's so interesting about slotting him
Speaker 3: into the Trump administration is that you have these sort
Speaker 3: of directionally radical and I mean that in a good
Speaker 3: way radical correct points about how completely corrupted our food
Speaker 3: supply is, how corrupted the government is. And he's surrounded
Speaker 3: by because he's at HHS, which is extremely powerful, but
Speaker 3: it's not in charge of it's not entirely in charge
Speaker 3: of things like agriculture.
Speaker 4: That's where Brooke Rollins, this is your point.
Speaker 3: About seed oil, it is that's where Brooke Rollins comes in,
Speaker 3: somebody who's had really good relationships with the industry there.
Speaker 3: That's where over at the EPA, Lee Zelden is somebody
Speaker 3: who's really opposed to, you know, the broader green agenda.
Speaker 4: And I'm sympathetic to that.
Speaker 3: But if you're RFK Junior, you are now I guess
Speaker 3: your efforts to clean up HHS in the name of
Speaker 3: reforming American government and improving American health from your own
Speaker 3: vantage point. This is the like fascinating tension and in
Speaker 3: Doge and elon world, it's like a more efficient government.
Speaker 3: But that's like if your goal is a more efficient government,
Speaker 3: if you're a RFK junior, you're not really somebody who's
Speaker 3: historically loved this idea of slashing and burning, because a
Speaker 3: lot of times your argument is in fact that the
Speaker 3: government is understaffed and has been gutted by industry, isn't
Speaker 3: able to perform oversight.
Speaker 4: It is the most bizarre. It is the most bizarre.
Speaker 3: Like marriage in the most bizarre time, and it's I
Speaker 3: guess having the expectedly bizarre effects.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2: And you know, he talks a lot about or did
Speaker 2: talk a lot about corruption in these agencies and the
Speaker 2: way moneyed interests, you know, get to say in all
Speaker 2: of this, I would I'm very comfortable saying this is
Speaker 2: the most corrupt administration in certainly modern American political history.
Speaker 2: There's nothing like you know, Trump saying Okay, you can
Speaker 2: pay a million dollars, you can come tomorrow, Laco, and
Speaker 2: you can make your case directly to me. I'm going
Speaker 2: to set up a shit coin so you can just
Speaker 2: like bribe me and catch in directly. We covered earlier
Speaker 2: all of the allegations of direct insider trading over the
Speaker 2: way that they're moving the markets, and you know, you
Speaker 2: can see it in these moves with oh, we're just
Speaker 2: not going to regulate the food industry anymore because they
Speaker 2: want that. We're just not going to expose you know,
Speaker 2: where toxic chemicals are and communities because that's what industry wanted. So,
Speaker 2: you know, he, in his supposed quest against corruption, has
Speaker 2: signed up to be a defender of a wildly like
Speaker 2: historically corrupt administration where you know, everyone is just trying
Speaker 2: to trying to get theirs and certainly Trump and his
Speaker 2: family are trying to cash in in every way that
Speaker 2: they can.
Speaker 3: It'll be interesting to see how RFK Junior responds to
Speaker 3: some of this stuff. He'll definitely be getting questions about
Speaker 3: it as we go forward. What's happening with agg and EPA,
Speaker 3: So we will.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned for that.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, christ so let's turn to the Democrats because
Speaker 3: rom Emmanuel went on the I've Had It podcast and
Speaker 3: this comes as David Hogg is facing tough questions over
Speaker 3: not just from the media, by the way, but also
Speaker 3: from Hakeem Jefferyes. I think we have a clip of
Speaker 3: that over his pledge to actually like have a robust
Speaker 3: primary effort against the democratic status quo. Let's take a
Speaker 3: look at this clip. Let's start with this clip of
Speaker 3: Ram and Manuel Rumored, twenty twenty eight presidential candidate on
Speaker 3: the I've had a podcast.
Speaker 4: This was released yesterday. Take a look.
Speaker 17: So what have you had it with?
Speaker 8: I would say, we have a series of topics that
Speaker 8: I think sometimes consume in the other topics that don't
Speaker 8: actually get the attention that they should get, And we
Speaker 8: ended up fighting for the wrong things.
Speaker 7: We were really south on kitchen table issues. We weren't
Speaker 7: really good about the family room issues.
Speaker 17: Disagree with you, I disagree with you.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 13: The only room we are the only room we do
Speaker 13: really well was the bathroom, and that's the smallest room.
Speaker 17: Such bullshit, that is total bullshit. That is buying into
Speaker 17: the right wing media narrative. And I'm so sick of
Speaker 17: democrats like you selling out and saying this. You know
Speaker 17: who talks about trans people more than anybody. Maga Kamala
Speaker 17: Harris talked about homeownership, she talked about kitchen table issues.
Speaker 17: Trump's over there droning on about Hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me.
Speaker 17: This is where the Democrats lose because we're playing the
Speaker 17: game with the rule book. They've writ the rule book
Speaker 17: up and a cramedit down everybody's throat and crows are
Speaker 17: upset because Joe Biden pardoned his said, we kind of
Speaker 17: fucking fight. They're the gender obsessed weirdos, not us. We're
Speaker 17: the ones who fight for social security.
Speaker 4: We fight for Medica.
Speaker 17: And yeah, we're not gonna bully trans people. We're not gonna.
Speaker 9: Fucking do it.
Speaker 5: Do it fine? I mean, I love this lady. I
Speaker 5: don't know you.
Speaker 2: I did not know they existed until like a week ago.
Speaker 2: So Emily, give me, give me the backstory here, And
Speaker 2: you're antipathy towards it because I enjoyed her given it
Speaker 2: to Rama Manuel, even though my view was like, in
Speaker 2: a nuance way different from hers, But I just enjoyed
Speaker 2: her being like, the problem is people like you, ram Emanuel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I mean that is that was deeply cathartic
Speaker 4: to watch.
Speaker 3: And of course, because ram Emanuel is sort of squirming,
Speaker 3: he's like, you also seem to be a wealthy Democrat.
Speaker 4: Why are you yelling at me?
Speaker 2: On the podcasts, he thought he was giving her exactly
Speaker 2: the answer, Oh, yes, you're right, the bathroom too much
Speaker 2: and not enough the kitchen table, and she's.
Speaker 5: Like fuck you.
Speaker 2: Basically, I mean the one before I hear they're like
Speaker 2: backstory and what they've been up to. The thing that
Speaker 2: I would say is that the reason that the party
Speaker 2: has become has lost its credibility on kitchen table issues
Speaker 2: is because of people like Rama Manuel. So you don't
Speaker 2: get to now come in here and pretend like, oh,
Speaker 2: you understand and you're the savior of the Democratic Party. No,
Speaker 2: you are what's wrong with the Democratic Party. And she's
Speaker 2: also right that, like, you know, the reason why Republicans
Speaker 2: are successful at or were successful. I don't think they're
Speaker 2: particularly successful at this anymore, but we're successful leading into
Speaker 2: this election of painting Kamala Harris as being, you know,
Speaker 2: just concerned with these sort of like niche, unpopular issues
Speaker 2: is because Democrats don't have a broader narrative of what
Speaker 2: they're fighting for a lah Bernie Sanders and oligarchy where
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, yeah, he's you know, he supports trans rights,
Speaker 2: but no one is going to say that's like the
Speaker 2: thing the core of everything that he is focused on
Speaker 2: so you know, that's why I say my view is
Speaker 2: like subtly different from hers, because really the problem is
Speaker 2: that the way Republicans were able to successfully paint the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party as being overly concerned with issues that were
Speaker 2: not top of mind priorities for them is people like
Speaker 2: Rob Emmanuel and their abandonment of the working class and
Speaker 2: affirmative alignment of the Democratic Party with corporate interests.
Speaker 3: Well, her point, I mean something that we've covered and
Speaker 3: I think is a helpful point that both you and
Speaker 3: Ryan have made for a long time. It really undermines
Speaker 3: the point she's making that it's the right wing that
Speaker 3: was talking about all of the stuff for a long time.
Speaker 3: Like I don't disagree obviously that the right has exploited
Speaker 3: some like culture war issues that I think are really
Speaker 3: serious and they do it for red beat purposes. Like
Speaker 3: when the r and cl Richmond North of Richmond at
Speaker 3: a debate was that the rn C, I think it was, like,
Speaker 3: I think it was a decision from the RNC.
Speaker 4: To play it.
Speaker 5: I think that's right. I think that's right.
Speaker 2: There certainly was a lot of enthusiasm for the song
Speaker 2: at the time, but.
Speaker 3: The RNC USUIA is just like so grading in so
Speaker 3: many different ways.
Speaker 4: So I don't disagree with that point.
Speaker 3: But these issues were used as shields by corporate Democrats
Speaker 3: who were actually talking about them disproportionately to distract from
Speaker 3: their oligarchical policies on like labor and families and all
Speaker 3: of that. So that underminds the point she's making that
Speaker 3: is just the crazy right wing people who were talking
Speaker 3: about these things. Actually there was a concerted effort by
Speaker 3: corporate America to embrace things like DEI and ESG to
Speaker 3: shield to.
Speaker 4: Play kate the left.
Speaker 3: And so that's what really pisses me off about that,
Speaker 3: And it pisses me off when Rama Manuel is also
Speaker 3: suddenly coming out in twenty twenty five and acting like
Speaker 3: it's a really like big point that he's brave for
Speaker 3: making and he can sort of design this presidential run.
Speaker 4: Around like it is stupid and profoundly stupid.
Speaker 2: It Also if he does want to, I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't really take seriously this whole like he wants to
Speaker 2: run for president or whatever, But him, Gavin Newsom, there's
Speaker 2: a handful of them that are so out of touch
Speaker 2: with where the Democratic base is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and again, like he's someone who who worked for
Speaker 3: Barack Obama and Gavin Newsom is somebody who has not
Speaker 3: like exactly been kicking the left to the curb. Like
Speaker 3: if they really were good at reading the political wins,
Speaker 3: they would probably be coming to this in a way
Speaker 3: closer to her, to be honest, because the ram Emmanuel
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom approach is getting pilloried on social media. Like
Speaker 3: even Charlie Kirk, who had that conversation with Newsom about
Speaker 3: trance stuff, has come out and been like, oh so
Speaker 3: he was just lying, like the face to face having
Speaker 3: this great conversation. But Gavin Newsom is now getting hit
Speaker 3: from the left and from the right. He's not making
Speaker 3: the right happy and he's not making the left happy.
Speaker 3: So if they were actually really adept at reading the
Speaker 3: political win they would sound closer to that. I've had
Speaker 3: it podcast Girls who My Beef with goes back to
Speaker 3: Bravo World. They had a show on Bravo called Sweet
Speaker 3: Home Oklahoma. And we don't even need to open this
Speaker 3: can of worms, but.
Speaker 5: It open it. I want to know what I want
Speaker 5: to know these worms.
Speaker 3: I just I hate, like I just really hate the whole,
Speaker 3: like corporate America, like propping up the hicklib thing.
Speaker 4: It just drives me nuts.
Speaker 3: It just I can't stand it because what I think,
Speaker 3: like genuinely lacks representation in that world is like people
Speaker 3: who aren't who.
Speaker 4: Are are Hicks but not Libs.
Speaker 3: And so I think corporate America just like soothes itself
Speaker 3: by saying, oh, we checked off the Oklahoma box, but
Speaker 3: they can throw people out there who are utterly unrepresentative
Speaker 3: of probably most of Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: So anyway, so you're judging them for their identity. I
Speaker 2: got it, for their identity. You wanted a different framing
Speaker 2: of identity politics.
Speaker 3: I want affirmative action for fascist conservative pixs, affirmative action
Speaker 3: for fascists.
Speaker 2: It's like the same thing that the Trump administration sent
Speaker 2: to Harvard, like you can only only MAGA is allowed
Speaker 2: into your school now, sorry, only MAGA professors heading the
Speaker 2: physics department, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Representation for Curtis Jarvin and academia is DEI worth doing.
Speaker 4: Let's let's get to David Hogg actually.
Speaker 3: Because like we could we have a serious discussion about
Speaker 3: the different point.
Speaker 4: But that's basically the backstory of my being.
Speaker 2: Okay, your antipathy towards them, Okay, Yes, exactly, but I
Speaker 2: want I'm enjoying them. I'm enjoying them. I want to
Speaker 2: try to get them on the show.
Speaker 4: The Oliver Anthony.
Speaker 3: They actually kind of connect to it, by the way,
Speaker 3: which is that like the right uses Oliver Anthony and
Speaker 3: thought like, oh, we finally found someone that we can
Speaker 3: elevate who's like this working class guy. But they didn't
Speaker 3: love it when he started coming out against Republicans either.
Speaker 3: This is actual presentation of how people think, but it's
Speaker 3: never convenient to people who elevate them. So anyway, David Hogg,
Speaker 3: let's roll this clip of David Hogg tustling with Major
Speaker 3: Garrett on CBS, because Hogg, as we've covered before, is
Speaker 3: now supporting this idea of a fairly robust primary campaign
Speaker 3: against establishment Democrats.
Speaker 4: So let's roll e too.
Speaker 18: Let me let you address some social media criticism you've gotten,
Speaker 18: Matt Bennett from the Clinton Gore era. This is insane behavior.
Speaker 18: John Angeloni Polster, most recently for President Biden. Twenty million
Speaker 18: dollars should be spent on swing state legislative races, meeting
Speaker 18: state legislative races, and down ballot, not on this. Steve
Speaker 18: Shale of Florida Democratic strategists, saying the DNC's vice chair
Speaker 18: should be focused on this kind of engagement meeting, engaging
Speaker 18: in places in battleground states where Democrats have lost ground,
Speaker 18: not over which deem in a plus twenty seat should
Speaker 18: be primaried.
Speaker 19: And you know, look at the last results of the
Speaker 19: previous election. Those are the purported experts that brought us here.
Speaker 19: Just to say, it's not personal, right, I don't take
Speaker 19: those attacks personally in this regard. This is a strategic disagreement.
Speaker 19: And I want to be clear. All this money that
Speaker 19: we're raising is not just only being spent on primaries
Speaker 19: by any means. That is the story of a lot
Speaker 19: of journalists and media run with We.
Speaker 18: Are working to spend it on, We're.
Speaker 19: Also going to be spending it on frontline seats where
Speaker 19: great young people are running right if they are the
Speaker 19: Democratic nominee, to make sure we're bringing in fresh faces
Speaker 19: to Congress right now. We talk about diversity all the
Speaker 19: time in Congress. One of the things that we don't
Speaker 19: talk about as much in regard to that is age. Currently,
Speaker 19: if we have the same number of twenty five to
Speaker 19: thirty year olds in Congress as we do proportionally to
Speaker 19: the population, we would have over forty people under the
Speaker 19: age of thirty in Congress. And I don't know if
Speaker 19: you've looked at Congress recently, we have one that is
Speaker 19: under the age of thirty. That is not good for
Speaker 19: the future of the Democratic Party. Is this just out
Speaker 19: with the old and in with the new. I would
Speaker 19: say no, this is out with the ineffective and in
Speaker 19: with the effective, because we need members who are ready
Speaker 19: to meet this moment to fight back against Donald Trump.
Speaker 19: And what that looks like are people like Senator Van
Speaker 19: Holling who are literally going to El Salvador to say
Speaker 19: this man needs to come back. It looks like people
Speaker 19: like Corey Booker, who mind you did primary somebody to
Speaker 19: get to that position. It looks like people in many
Speaker 19: ways like a king Jeffries who primaried multiple people to
Speaker 19: get to that position. Right, this is a healthy process
Speaker 19: for our party and I think we should have an
Speaker 19: embrace of that when it doesn't risk us losing the House.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom is also giving more interviews on his
Speaker 3: attempt to write the ship of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: We can put the next element up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is E three.
Speaker 3: I gave an interview to The Hill yesterday where he said,
Speaker 3: we have not done a forensic of what just went wrong, period,
Speaker 3: full stop.
Speaker 4: I don't think it, I know it. I mean to
Speaker 4: the extent that I'm marginally part of his party.
Speaker 3: I remempresent the state larger than twenty one state populations combined,
Speaker 3: and I can assure you there's not been a party
Speaker 3: discussion that I'm aware of that has included the state
Speaker 3: of California. I don't know what the party is, he said.
Speaker 3: I'm still struggling with that, Gavin. Maybe people aren't considering
Speaker 3: the state of California as prominently as you want them
Speaker 3: to because the state of California is an utter disrepair.
Speaker 4: Maybe that has something to do with it.
Speaker 3: Well done, Gavin, on that we can move to the
Speaker 3: next element, as well as another comment from him about
Speaker 3: when he had Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on. He says,
Speaker 3: what I feel was exactly to me exhibit a of
Speaker 3: what I feel is wrong right now with my party,
Speaker 3: an unwillingness to even engage in platform to listen, and
Speaker 3: so I'm testing that at the same time I'm being
Speaker 3: tested by it because the reaction has been a little
Speaker 3: more bumpy than I anticipated.
Speaker 5: And you know, this is such a bullshit from him.
Speaker 2: Honestly, it's such because the vast majority of people who
Speaker 2: were who were unhappy, myself included. With the Charlie Kirk
Speaker 2: and the Steve Bannon interviews, it wasn't because he platformed them.
Speaker 2: It's because you, like it was a softball interview. You
Speaker 2: elevated them, You made them look good, even as they
Speaker 2: were the whole time taking jabs at him. I mean,
Speaker 2: Charlie Kirk from the outset was like, oh, you don't lunch,
Speaker 2: your son stay home from school to meet me? Why
Speaker 2: not you close the schools during COVID? You know, the
Speaker 2: whole thing with Steve Bannon. I think it was I
Speaker 2: can't remember who it was that said the Sun. Twitter
Speaker 2: was like Gavin Newsom being like, oh, you're amazing and
Speaker 2: I appreciate you, and Steve Bannon being like you're a demon.
Speaker 2: So the problem wasn't platforming them. It was Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 2: We know you're actually good at debating. We saw you
Speaker 2: do it with Ron DeSantis very effectively. Make the case
Speaker 2: for your principles, make the case for like a liberal view,
Speaker 2: you know, an appealing democratic party. They used you on
Speaker 2: your own platform to further their ideology. So yeah, of
Speaker 2: course the Democratic base is not going to be psyched
Speaker 2: about what you were doing there. And you know, also
Speaker 2: it was not like it was just Democratic elites or
Speaker 2: influencers online or whatever. Look at how he's faring in
Speaker 2: these early who do you want as the next time
Speaker 2: Democratic leader? Like the Democratic base was disgusted by this
Speaker 2: approach because there truly is and I think you see
Speaker 2: Chris van Holland, and you see Maxwell Frost, you see
Speaker 2: other Democrats who I think have been coming around to Okay,
Speaker 2: we got to do something, We've got to be more aggressive,
Speaker 2: we got to use the tools that we have, etc.
Speaker 2: But that has been led by a base that has
Speaker 2: been utterly disgusted with the failures of people like Gavin
Speaker 2: Newsom to put up a fight who were much more inclined,
Speaker 2: whose instincts were all in the direction of let me
Speaker 2: just lay down and capitulate. And with Gavin Newsome in particular,
Speaker 2: like I know where it comes from. It's because he's
Speaker 2: so close with all of these Silicon Valley donors who
Speaker 2: are all super jealous of the you know, Mark Andrieson's
Speaker 2: and the Elon Musk and whatever of the world who
Speaker 2: jumped on the other side, and so they're not getting
Speaker 2: their goodies now because they picked the wrong team. And
Speaker 2: that's who he that's who has his ear and why
Speaker 2: he so profoundly misad this political moment in terms of
Speaker 2: what the Democratic base wants.
Speaker 4: Huh, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Let's roll this clip of Hakim Jeffreys responding to the
Speaker 3: Hog aligned efforts to potentially primary some candidates, which were
Speaker 3: I mean, I think similarly tone duff, though not unpredictably
Speaker 3: tone duff.
Speaker 4: So let's roll the club.
Speaker 15: Well, I look forward to standing behind every single Democratic incumbent,
Speaker 15: from the most progressive to the most centrist, in all
Speaker 15: points in between. Primaries are a fact of life. But
Speaker 15: here's the thing. I'm going to really focus on trying
Speaker 15: to defeat Republican incumbents so we can take back control
Speaker 15: of the House of Representatives and begin the process of
Speaker 15: ending this national nightmare that's being visited upon us by
Speaker 15: far right extremism.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, that's his job, Crystal. He's not going
Speaker 3: to come out and be like, yeah, we got some
Speaker 3: old people we want to just give the boot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, listen, if he actually holds to that. That
Speaker 2: would be an improvement because in the past, Yeah, in
Speaker 2: the past, the Democratic Party has yes stood behind their
Speaker 2: like corporate aligned members. But if you know, if a
Speaker 2: Jamal Bowman or Corey Bush orra Shidah Hlib gets primaried,
Speaker 2: they're good with that.
Speaker 5: They're good with that.
Speaker 2: So you know, if he actually listen, I understand if
Speaker 2: you are the you know, you're the House majority leader,
Speaker 2: and these are your people, and you're just going to
Speaker 2: uniformly back whoever the incumbent Democrat is. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't support that, but at least, you know, that's a
Speaker 2: principle of neutrality ideologically, but that has not historically been
Speaker 2: the case within the Democratic Party. And so that's what
Speaker 2: they're really upset about with regard to David Hogg is.
Speaker 2: They're worried that, you know, he is going to be
Speaker 2: on the side of you know, people who are more progressive,
Speaker 2: who are even outside of the ideological valance, who just
Speaker 2: you know, actually understand that what they're up against, that
Speaker 2: they're up against this authoritarian takeover, that the stakes are
Speaker 2: quite high, that they need to be visible, that they
Speaker 2: understand social media, and you know, I was actually a
Speaker 2: little bit hopeful about David Hogg coming into this position.
Speaker 2: I argued with Soccer on the show about this simply
Speaker 2: because he is younger and he does at least understand
Speaker 2: the current media ecosystem, and that is something that is
Speaker 2: sorely lacking within the Democratic Party. And so I think
Speaker 2: that it has already borne out that to have him
Speaker 2: as DNC vice here and be like, yeah, if you
Speaker 2: are a weak and ineffective Democrat who's been around too long,
Speaker 2: We're going to come for you. I mean to me,
Speaker 2: that is an extraordinarily like positive development that I think
Speaker 2: will be wildly supported by the Democratic base at this point,
Speaker 2: which really has Eric Blanc was saying this too early
Speaker 2: in our interview, really has become much more radicalized in
Speaker 2: this Trump era and much more disenchanted with a lot
Speaker 2: of Democratic leadership.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you were totally vindicated in that about
Speaker 3: David Hogg, and I think I was pretty skeptical of
Speaker 3: it just and maybe I'll be vindicated in that way too,
Speaker 3: in like a cultural sense. I don't know that Hog
Speaker 3: is right, but this is I think probably outweighs that
Speaker 3: to be honest, like coming out and saying no, you
Speaker 3: have to put the fear of God in the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party's establishment, and they just haven't had that. This is
Speaker 3: very like Mitch McConnell versus Ted Cruz circle, like twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: And it's kind of what the Democrats need to be honest,
Speaker 3: because there's been a lot of going along to get along.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you have to burn the party down,
Speaker 3: but you have to threaten to burn the party down
Speaker 3: otherwise you don't get anything. Now, you don't negotiate with
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, like Donald Trump on tariffs, but you can,
Speaker 3: you know, have some measure of like serious like it
Speaker 3: just mounts a serious threat otherwise you don't get taken seriously.
Speaker 3: So I think that argument about howg has been vindicated
Speaker 3: so far and Crystal, this is just, I mean, genuinely
Speaker 3: a very difficult problem for Democrats to solve on the
Speaker 3: cultural front because the people like Rama Manuel and Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 3: they're the ones who were happy to use these issues
Speaker 3: as shields and.
Speaker 4: Now they're happy.
Speaker 3: You know that they don't believe anything because just as
Speaker 3: quickly as they embraced all of this, and you have
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom on tape waxing, you know, sanctemonious about the
Speaker 3: Latin X community just as quickly as he did that.
Speaker 3: He's literally saying no, I would never use that word.
Speaker 3: So that's how you know, he believes literally nothing. And
Speaker 3: they were using these issues all along as like to
Speaker 3: they were exploiting these issues all along as like shields,
Speaker 3: and they're not willing to go along with the like
Speaker 3: genuine anti oligarchy policies. And that's the crossroads that, as
Speaker 3: I see it at least, is really difficult for Democrats.
Speaker 3: By the way, what was really difficult for Republicans is
Speaker 3: the Tea Party base was actually more similar to Occupy
Speaker 3: Wall Street than anybody.
Speaker 4: Wanted to admit.
Speaker 3: And they never were like they were willing to like
Speaker 3: sort of do these cultural signifiers like we need term
Speaker 3: limits and we need to like screw Mitch McConnell, but
Speaker 3: not until Trump came along, and even to this day
Speaker 3: with Donald Trump in office, they're not really willing to
Speaker 3: wrap their arms fully around the policy agenda that a
Speaker 3: lot of their working class voters would want them to.
Speaker 3: And that's sort of that's the impasse that Democrats find
Speaker 3: themselves at too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean liberal elites and the rama manualsives did
Speaker 2: virtue signaling and on the Republican side they do vice
Speaker 2: signaling like that's but it's functions the same, it's the
Speaker 2: same function. You know, we were talking about Pete Hegseth
Speaker 2: earlier and it's like he can, you know, talk all
Speaker 2: about DEI and make people feel like there's something probationary
Speaker 2: going on at the Pentagon I. Meanwhile, he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: and we got a trillion dollar budget, so yeah, it's
Speaker 2: going to be the biggest military budget ever in the
Speaker 2: history of the world. So you know, this was used
Speaker 2: as a trojan horse also for a lot of the
Speaker 2: like dose agenda of completely defenestrating the ability to regulate
Speaker 2: corporate America. You know, if you just say like, oh,
Speaker 2: Conservats are being debanked or cancel culture DEI wokeness enough
Speaker 2: times they felt like they could smuggle in this pro
Speaker 2: oligarch agenda. And so you know, at this point, the
Speaker 2: wing of the party that has most stepped up to
Speaker 2: fight has been the left, or at least left liberals.
Speaker 2: Bernie and AOC really set the mark when I watched
Speaker 2: MSNBC and you got Nicole Wallace out there like they're
Speaker 2: the leaders of the party and they're doing a great
Speaker 2: job and they're doing everything right. I'm like, what is
Speaker 2: even going on here? I mean, is so profoundly different.
Speaker 2: I can't even wrap my head around it. And the
Speaker 2: cynical take is, well, that's all nice, well and good
Speaker 2: now that Bernie is too old and is never going
Speaker 2: to run for president again. I do think that there
Speaker 2: is some of that that now it's sort of more
Speaker 2: safe for them to embrace him. But I also think
Speaker 2: there is a genuine divide among people who thought who
Speaker 2: genuinely wanted to fight Trump and saw his threat for
Speaker 2: what it was, but thought that the way to do
Speaker 2: it was through you know, democracy talk, fascism talk, and
Speaker 2: like a standard liberal approach like Joe Biden and people
Speaker 2: who So those are people who you know, genuinely understood
Speaker 2: the stakes and want to fight, and now that the
Speaker 2: information has showed them like that was not the right
Speaker 2: way to fight, they are shifting their approach. And I
Speaker 2: think much of the Democratic base falls into that camp.
Speaker 2: And people like rom Emmanuel who have I wouldn't say
Speaker 2: they don't believe anything. He believes in his own ambition.
Speaker 2: He believes in, like, you know, serving corporate interests, and
Speaker 2: so even though the writing is on the wall, about
Speaker 2: what would be more effective to combat Trump and trump Ism.
Speaker 2: They are not going to change because they're ideologically committed
Speaker 2: to preserving a certain status quo that is deeply unpopular
Speaker 2: in the country.
Speaker 3: Let's move on to the drama at sixty Minutes and
Speaker 3: CBS more broadly crystal. Because a story broke yesterday in
Speaker 3: The New York Times that the executive producer we can
Speaker 3: go ahead and put this first hairs sheet up on
Speaker 3: the screen. The executive producer of CBS's sixty Minutes resigned
Speaker 3: and cited a quote loss of independence.
Speaker 4: This is Bill Owens.
Speaker 3: He's actually only the third person, as the New York
Speaker 3: Times notes, to run the program, and it's fifty seven
Speaker 3: year history that speaks really the continuity of leadership behind
Speaker 3: sixty minutes.
Speaker 4: And I think Chris.
Speaker 3: Will probably also how serious CBS is about having continuity
Speaker 3: of leadership at sixty minutes, Owen said, quote. Over the
Speaker 3: past months, it has become clear that I would not
Speaker 3: be allowed to run the show as I have always
Speaker 3: run it, to make independent decisions based on what is
Speaker 3: right for sixty minutes, right for the audience. So having
Speaker 3: defended the show and what we stand for from every angle,
Speaker 3: over time with everything I could, I'm stepping aside so
Speaker 3: the show can move forward. That memo was leaked to
Speaker 3: The New York Times strategically, probably not by CBS, but
Speaker 3: maybe by CBS. But we learned more as the day
Speaker 3: went on about exactly what happened there.
Speaker 4: This is from This is from Semaphore.
Speaker 3: They had a pretty good report on what was happening
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, because I just want to say that
Speaker 3: Bill Owen's memo is pretty careful in remaining vague about
Speaker 3: how he wasn't able to make quote independent decisions. Obviously,
Speaker 3: the New York Times immediately framed it in the context
Speaker 3: of the suit that Donald Trump is fighting CBS and
Speaker 3: over that Kamala that edited Kamala Harris interview on sixty
Speaker 3: minutes ahead of the election. The Trump campaign is still
Speaker 3: the Trump camp is claiming that that amounted to election interference.
Speaker 3: But we've seen like ABC News settle with Trump over
Speaker 3: the Georgie Stephanopolis case, and so questions about what's really
Speaker 3: going on between the Trump administration and CBS were immediately
Speaker 3: raised in light of this information. And then Semaphore had
Speaker 3: a scoop from Max Tanny yesterday that Sherry Redstone, who
Speaker 3: is the head of CBS. She owns paramount and is
Speaker 3: therefore the head of CBS, was keeping tabs on sixty
Speaker 3: minutes sixty minutes segments about Donald Trump. According to two
Speaker 3: people familiar to the situation, this was in quote recent days,
Speaker 3: she sought to know which upcoming sixty minute stories were
Speaker 3: about Trump and why that's interesting.
Speaker 4: Also is that sixty.
Speaker 3: Minutes there was an ap story I went and found
Speaker 3: yesterday Crystal about how fearless sixty minutes had been about
Speaker 3: Donald Trump after he was around the time of the inauguration,
Speaker 3: despite the legal battle.
Speaker 4: So there's something in.
Speaker 3: Recent days here according to the Semaphore report, where Redstone
Speaker 3: was looking to kind of keep tabs on how they
Speaker 3: covered Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: So what's your reaction.
Speaker 2: Crystal, Yeah, no, I mean I think there were a
Speaker 2: lot of indications. So sixty minutes has I think done
Speaker 2: some fantastic journalism in the Trump two point zero era.
Speaker 2: We highlighted here a report they were one of the
Speaker 2: first to dig into, like, okay, well, who actually were
Speaker 2: these people you claimed were the worst of the worst
Speaker 2: gang members that got disappeared into the torture dungeon in
Speaker 2: El Salvador. In particular highlighting the case of Andre the
Speaker 2: makeup artist, and they, you know, dug into his story
Speaker 2: and those of others and talked to his loved ones,
Speaker 2: and they were the ones to first analyze and find
Speaker 2: I think it was their finding was seventy five percent
Speaker 2: of those who were sent had no criminal record whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So they have done some extraordinary work. I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone could deny that, and seemed to be unflinching. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, apparently Emily, according to I believe this
Speaker 2: was a New York Times report, some of the problem
Speaker 2: began after a sixty minute segment that you might remember
Speaker 2: in January about the war between about Israel's assault on Gaza,
Speaker 2: and they interviewed State Department former State Department officials who
Speaker 2: had resigned over the you know, their horror at what
Speaker 2: the US was doing there. They shared exclusive images from
Speaker 2: within Gaza that exposed how barbarous it was. They talked
Speaker 2: about how by one analysis, there were seventy thousand Palestinians
Speaker 2: who had been killed there. And apparently Sherry Redstone after
Speaker 2: that complained to CBS executives about that segment, and they
Speaker 2: appointed a CBS producer to a new role overseeing the
Speaker 2: news division's journalistic standards, and she was put into place
Speaker 2: to review any segments that were deemed politically sensitive, so
Speaker 2: that appears to have been part of it as well.
Speaker 2: And then and she, by the way, she's paramounts controlling shareholder,
Speaker 2: so she's like the one one in charge, and they're
Speaker 2: trying to approve get approval for a multi billion dollar
Speaker 2: sale of her company to Skydance, which is run by
Speaker 2: Larry Ellison. So you know, I mean, this is the
Speaker 2: problem with corporate media, right, This is the problem with
Speaker 2: corporate media. Sixty minutes is not important to Sherry Redstone.
Speaker 2: They want their merger deal to go through. That's what
Speaker 2: the real you know, the real interest of the bottom
Speaker 2: line is, and doing really hard hitting journalism on the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is not consistent with the goal of obtaining
Speaker 2: your merger approval, especially with this administration which weaponizes the
Speaker 2: government to punish those that they perceive to be enemies.
Speaker 2: So you add to that the Kamala Harris thing, and
Speaker 2: you can see that, you know, pressure was coming down
Speaker 2: of well, how often are you going to say negative
Speaker 2: things about the Trump administration and cover things that they're
Speaker 2: doing in an unflattering light. You know, we need to
Speaker 2: soften the edges, we need, we need to be made aware.
Speaker 2: And even just that, and I speak from experience, even
Speaker 2: just that insertion of like the top corporate brass needs
Speaker 2: to know if you're doing a Trump related story that
Speaker 2: is intended to have a chilling effect, because who wants
Speaker 2: to always go up the chain to the boss and
Speaker 2: beg and plead your case and whatever. So if you're
Speaker 2: weighing two different storylines and one requires you to do
Speaker 2: that and one of them can sail through and you're
Speaker 2: not gonna have many political issues within the company, there's
Speaker 2: going to be heavy incentive to move in that direction. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's I think it's I think
Speaker 2: it shows a lot of integrity that he got to
Speaker 2: a point where he felt he had fought as hard
Speaker 2: as he could to maintain his journalistic independence in that
Speaker 2: of the program and got to a place where it's like,
Speaker 2: I can't associate myself with this anymore.
Speaker 3: And this is really interesting, the guidance stuff. So The
Speaker 3: New York Times, in this report says Redstone is eager
Speaker 3: to secure the Trump's administration. The Trump administration's approval for
Speaker 3: multi billion dollar sale over company is Skuydance, a company
Speaker 3: run by the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison. Bear
Speaker 3: in mind, and I'll get to this more in a second.
Speaker 3: Larry Ellison is fairly close with the Trump administration. The
Speaker 3: Times also reports that Redstone has quote expressed a desire
Speaker 3: to settle mister Trump's case, which stems from what the
Speaker 3: president has called a deceptively edited interview on October with
Speaker 3: Vice President Kamala Harris that aired.
Speaker 4: On sixty minutes.
Speaker 3: That would essentially, I mean, it is such a stupid
Speaker 3: and ridiculous case, even if CBS did deceptively, which they
Speaker 3: but corporate media.
Speaker 4: Is always like deceptively editing stuff.
Speaker 3: It's not illegal and it's not defamation in the vast
Speaker 3: majority of cases, including this one. To settle that case,
Speaker 3: Unlike the George Stephanopolis one, which I think was actually
Speaker 3: a lot trickier from ABC, this is not the same
Speaker 3: thing that would basically amount to a bribe in the
Speaker 3: context of this sale. Like, that's how stupid it would
Speaker 3: be to settle this case with Trump. From just a
Speaker 3: legal standpoint, that's how stupid it would be. But from
Speaker 3: a business standpoint, it may indeed be it very clever.
Speaker 3: I want to flash back to a New York Times
Speaker 3: headline or a New York Post headline I'm sorry from
Speaker 3: January when Donald Trump announced his big AI deal.
Speaker 4: This is an exclusive in the New York Post.
Speaker 3: Larry Allison's backing of Trump's five hundred billion dollar AI
Speaker 3: project could help save Paramount merger. According to sources, Ellison, Right,
Speaker 3: whose networth is currently pegged by Forbes at two hundred
Speaker 3: and five billion, is likely hoping his show of support
Speaker 3: for Stargate will help his son, David's Skydance Media to
Speaker 3: gain regulatory approval for his controversial eight billion dollar deal
Speaker 3: to merge with Paramount. That's what's going on. That's like
Speaker 3: how serious they are about this freaking merger that it's
Speaker 3: now affecting sixty minutes. It's just so I mean this again,
Speaker 3: like this is not exceptional.
Speaker 4: This stuff happens. This is the habit of corporate media.
Speaker 4: It's how they.
Speaker 3: Handle their news. But holy smoke, so this one is
Speaker 3: so brazen.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, yeah, this is at a new level.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any doubt that it's at a
Speaker 2: new level. And it's because the Trump administration is at
Speaker 2: a new level and just making it really clear that
Speaker 2: they're going to help their friends and they're going to
Speaker 2: fuck their enemies, and they're going to use, you know,
Speaker 2: every power that they have in the state, legal and
Speaker 2: illegal in order to do it. And you know, this
Speaker 2: is my concern with the you know, something like an
Speaker 2: anti trust agenda, which I think is so important and
Speaker 2: which you know, was significantly moved forward under the Biden
Speaker 2: administration with Lee Na Kahan and with Jonathan Canter, and
Speaker 2: you know, one of the most positive developments of the
Speaker 2: Biden administration was moved in that direction. But if you
Speaker 2: have an administration that is just going to use those
Speaker 2: powers of green lighting and blocking mergers as basically a
Speaker 2: political weapon, you're going to discredit an entire project which
Speaker 2: is actually really important and really positive for the American people.
Speaker 2: And that certainly that's how corporate America thinks that the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is going about their business, that it has
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the merits of whether the merger
Speaker 2: is going to be beneficial for the country or not,
Speaker 2: and everything to do with whether or not you appropriately
Speaker 2: praised him, how much money you gave to inauguration, whether
Speaker 2: you ponied up the money for his Stargate thing, whether
Speaker 2: you spent a million dollars to go down to mar
Speaker 2: Lago and plead your case, et cetera. And that's a
Speaker 2: that's a really bad place for a purported democracy to be.
Speaker 2: That's a very bad place for it to be, because
Speaker 2: then you just end up with a cult of sycophantic,
Speaker 2: favored oligarchs who get to do what they want with
Speaker 2: impunity and run everything.
Speaker 4: This is yeah, I mean, this is oligarchy.
Speaker 3: This is i this is your classic example. A source
Speaker 3: coast to Paramount back in January said, quote, this is
Speaker 3: very smart for Larry to do. It tells me he
Speaker 3: won't have any issues with the Paramount deal. And that's
Speaker 3: in reference to again him backing the Stargate project, the
Speaker 3: five hundred billion dollar AI project that Trump came out
Speaker 3: and did that press conference with very early in the
Speaker 3: second term, surrounded by Sam Altman and Larry Allison and
Speaker 3: others right away. And so then you have a source
Speaker 3: talking in your post say, oh, it tells me he's
Speaker 3: not gonna have any problem at all with this Guide
Speaker 3: Dance merger. Unbelievable, it really, I mean, it's perfect. But
Speaker 3: what's also interesting about it is it reminds me so
Speaker 3: much of what happened with Mark Zuckerberg last week.
Speaker 4: We'll see, But Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 3: Has been pouring millions of dollars to lobby the Trump
Speaker 3: administration to back off the anti trust suit, and he
Speaker 3: got smacked in the face for glue last week when Trump's.
Speaker 4: FTC went through with it. Because Trump's FTC, in a sort.
Speaker 3: Of nod to the New Right that kind of helped
Speaker 3: Trump get back in power, is staffed by legit like
Speaker 3: Lena Kahan type, and we'll see again. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're Alena con type operating under Donald Trump, you probably
Speaker 3: aren't the same as Alena con type operating under Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: who was like just vacant, mentally vacant for most of
Speaker 3: his presidency. So you know, if Donald Trump does pick
Speaker 3: up the phone and tell them to stop the anti
Speaker 3: trust case into Facebook or Meta, then maybe that does
Speaker 3: legitimately change things. But Zuckerberg was in for a spent
Speaker 3: all this money and was in for really harsh awakening
Speaker 3: when he realized Andrew Ferguson was not dropping the suit
Speaker 3: and Gil Slater is serious and these people are like
Speaker 3: actual we don't know how much power they'll have when
Speaker 3: everything is said and done at the end of this administration.
Speaker 3: But they're like actual anti corporate ideologues who have this
Speaker 3: like opposition to the ideology of anti trust that was popular.
Speaker 4: On the right and the center left for a long time.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if Larry Elson is about to
Speaker 3: run headfirst into the exact same thing. Maybe because this
Speaker 3: is the nature of Donald Trump. We were talking about
Speaker 3: this in the tariff block. This is about what move
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is in on a given day, and who
Speaker 3: can have his ear on a given day. We now
Speaker 3: know that with Facebook he was urmeta. I'm sorry, he
Speaker 3: was persuaded by a meeting that he had with Andrew Ferguson.
Speaker 3: So we don't we actually don't know what's gonna happen
Speaker 3: with us, but it is sort of I guess the
Speaker 3: silver lining is amusing Crystal to watch the oligarch sort
Speaker 3: of stretch their necks out with millions and millions of dollars,
Speaker 3: put the credibility of their flagship news program on the
Speaker 3: line to get a freaking merger through.
Speaker 5: It's just so pathetic. It is pathetic.
Speaker 2: I mean, Zuckerberg is particularly pathetic, particularly pathetic because he
Speaker 2: didn't just do all the like sucking up up and
Speaker 2: the you know, here's some cash for your inauguration or
Speaker 2: I don't remember the details. I think he did give
Speaker 2: for the inauguration. But he also like completely changed his
Speaker 2: personal appearance and went on joor gonna like I'm moving
Speaker 2: content moderation to Texas, like he did the whole, the
Speaker 2: whole thing, and they're still like now I still don't
Speaker 2: like you, sorry.
Speaker 4: And it's just like it is.
Speaker 3: So it goes to what we're talking about with Rom
Speaker 3: and Manuel again earlier in the show, or Gavin Newsom
Speaker 3: going from like using latin X to being like I
Speaker 3: never used latin X.
Speaker 4: It's like they.
Speaker 3: Believe in their own power and their own bank accounts
Speaker 3: and their own businesses more than they believe in any
Speaker 3: of the politics that they wear literally in Zuckerberg's case,
Speaker 3: like fashion.
Speaker 5: His big chain.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he wears his politics like his
Speaker 3: politics changed with his fashion because he's trying to like
Speaker 3: suck up to people and he's trying to do something
Speaker 3: with his like it's all very.
Speaker 4: Obvious what he's what he's doing. It's very transparent what
Speaker 4: he's doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and with him, he goes from taking meetings with
Speaker 3: the FBI and then taking their wink wink and suppressing
Speaker 3: the Hunter Biden's story on Meta to being like, oh,
Speaker 3: the censorship is horrible and we never intended that, you know,
Speaker 3: to be as it's just so stupid.
Speaker 2: And well and they're still censoring aggressively on behalf of
Speaker 2: the Israelis by the way, which has been exposed, especially
Speaker 2: on Instagram.
Speaker 4: It's so pathetic. It's also a pathetic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's I mean it is, Yes, it is pathetic.
Speaker 2: And it does get to like the Gavin Newsom point too,
Speaker 2: of like they still don't like you, bro, Like they
Speaker 2: still aren't going to like you.
Speaker 5: And I just want to say.
Speaker 2: Like the instinct on the from the base of the
Speaker 2: Republican Party on the populace right that the tech oligarchs
Speaker 2: are an evil, malevolent force in American society, like that
Speaker 2: instinct is correct. Yeah, I think that they are a
Speaker 2: malevolent force in the world. I think they are anti human.
Speaker 2: I think they are Naomi Client said this, and I agree.
Speaker 2: I think they are anti creation. I think that they do.
Speaker 2: They you know, have these bizarre like End Times cult
Speaker 2: type fantasies about uploading their consciousness to the cloud and
Speaker 2: what did Elon say, We're being used to like boot
Speaker 2: ai Like, that's their view of the world, and I
Speaker 2: think they should be I think they need to be
Speaker 2: stopped at all costs. And one of the most one
Speaker 2: of the things that has disturbed me the most in
Speaker 2: this Trump administration is the way that their ideology, through
Speaker 2: the person of Elon and Doge and how much power
Speaker 2: and sway he has had in the government, has been
Speaker 2: quite ascendant in a way that I think is genuinely
Speaker 2: like a threat to people who value humanity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we'll see.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's just we're in a time
Speaker 3: when people are so you know, rootless, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's easy to get caught up and going along with,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever someone like Donald Trump is surrounding himself with,
Speaker 3: because people put their trust in different figures and we're
Speaker 3: like looking for that. I think it's where the the
Speaker 3: you know, whether you agree with it or not, the
Speaker 3: moral clarity that Bernie Sanders has come out with in
Speaker 3: the last month or so is really really attractive to
Speaker 3: people because it's not wishy washy milk toast rama, manual
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom and bullshit.
Speaker 4: It's this is a coher a clear and coherent.
Speaker 3: Worldview that I deeply believe in in the fire with
Speaker 3: every fiber of my being. Here's why. Uh, that's really
Speaker 3: attractive to people right now. And you know that's something
Speaker 3: for I think the right to watch out for as well,
Speaker 3: because it's it's not clear, it's it really muddles it
Speaker 3: to bring Elon Musk and some of these tech guys
Speaker 3: into the picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: And the agenda that they want is not when that
Speaker 2: serves humanity, that's right.
Speaker 4: Well, I not know, Chris, the destruction of humanity.
Speaker 2: I like that we started with this peg about sixty
Speaker 2: minutes and somehow ended up in the tech barons wanting
Speaker 2: to destroy the world. I'm not even really sure how
Speaker 2: we got mergers.
Speaker 5: That's how.
Speaker 3: I was just over here like googling Larry Allison getting
Speaker 3: to the New York Post article, and then we went
Speaker 3: off the rails, because why not.
Speaker 4: It's a girl show.
Speaker 5: Girl show, that's what it is, the girl shows.
Speaker 2: We need to invite those ladies what are their names
Speaker 2: from the the.
Speaker 5: What I've had it, I've got a podcast.
Speaker 2: We need to have those ladies on with us, Emily.
Speaker 2: We need to make amends. I can I can do
Speaker 2: like a you know, we can do a restorative justice
Speaker 2: with you and them.
Speaker 4: Wit cough.
Speaker 5: Be like, you don't want me to meet with.
Speaker 2: Them, Emily because you are afraid I'm gonna realize they're
Speaker 2: actually nice people.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know. We'll find out. Maybe we'll find out.
Speaker 4: We'll see, we'll see what we can do.
Speaker 5: Crystal, there you go, we'll work it out. Well. Thank
Speaker 5: you for having me, Emily.
Speaker 2: I enjoy it. It's always fun. And I'll be back
Speaker 2: with soccer tomorrow. Should be back to normal tomorrow. And
Speaker 2: we've got the Friday shows, so we'll see who can
Speaker 2: who shows up for that. We kind of keep it
Speaker 2: loose about which hosts joined for the Friday show, so
Speaker 2: you'd be surprised.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's always a fun surprise. I was actually
Speaker 3: Ryan and I didn't know that you and Sager weren't
Speaker 3: going to be on last week, and we logged on
Speaker 3: and we were like, oh, okay, I guess we're We're
Speaker 3: just going to be playing the roles of Crystal and
Speaker 3: Sager as best we can, in addition to the Ryan
Speaker 3: and Emily, which was you know it was an interesting experiment.
Speaker 5: You don't have to play our roles.
Speaker 4: You guys just do you, but you're always with us
Speaker 4: in spirit.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: Well, we'll see everybody on Friday. Thank you so much
Speaker 4: for tuning in.
Speaker 3: As a reminder, if you can't subscribe over at Breakingpoints
Speaker 3: dot Com Premium, go ahead and just like the video,
Speaker 3: send it to a friend.
Speaker 4: It helps us so much. We appreciate it.
Speaker 3: And we'll see you back here with more Crystal and
Speaker 3: Sager tomorrow morning.
Speaker 4: Ka