Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
Speaker 3: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 3: we have personal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of interesting news breaking this morning.
Speaker 1: First of all Biden responding to quessions about his age
Speaker 1: and also new rumors that perhaps he's not really going
Speaker 1: to run for president after all. So we'll go back
Speaker 1: to you and we've got some numbers to break down
Speaker 1: all of that. Also, the press is actually discussing the
Speaker 1: problem of eruption in Ukraine. We'll give you all the
Speaker 1: parameters and guidelines of when you're allowed to discuss such things.
Speaker 1: We've been given the green light just for today only basically,
Speaker 1: so we'll dig into all of that. Also, Burning Man
Speaker 1: becomes drowning Man as the festival turns somewhat disastrous, but
Speaker 1: it looks like folks are leaving and have left now,
Speaker 1: so we'll break that down for you. Trump with a
Speaker 1: long diatribe against electric vehicles, so that's interesting to react
Speaker 1: to that. In Bill Maher with quite a take on
Speaker 1: the writer's strike. We also have author Freddie Debor has
Speaker 1: a new book that I'm very excited to dig into
Speaker 1: with him. It's called How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement,
Speaker 1: So he will be joining us this morning as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're really excited for all of that, and thank
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Speaker 2: that to everybody very very soon. It's can be in
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Speaker 2: Let's get into Biden.
Speaker 1: Indeed, so there are some new DC insider rumors that
Speaker 1: perhaps Joe Biden is not going to complete the presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: maybe he's going to step aside, someone else is going
Speaker 1: to jump in. I've always been skeptical of this, but
Speaker 1: those rumors have been renewed, and we also have some
Speaker 1: new numbers that are pretty dire about how people, including Democrats,
Speaker 1: feel about Joe Biden's age. He clearly, over the Labor
Speaker 1: Day weekend felt compelled to respond to some of this
Speaker 1: critique of some of these rumors. Let's take a listen
Speaker 1: to what he had to say.
Speaker 4: Someone said, you know that Biden didn't getting old, man.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what, Well, guess what. Guess what I
Speaker 4: tell you know? The only thing that comes Today's a
Speaker 4: little bit of wisdom, Hi, Bob. I've been doing this
Speaker 4: longer on anybody, and that, guys, what I'm going to
Speaker 4: continue to do.
Speaker 5: With your help, going to continue to do it with
Speaker 5: your health.
Speaker 3: Wisdom, dementia, risk of death.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, again, I don't want to be unkind,
Speaker 2: but how can we be sitting here, you know, in
Speaker 2: the age of watching this man clearly on the decline
Speaker 2: over the last several years, on top of the Mitch
Speaker 2: McConnell incident and the Diane Feinstein incident, and not say
Speaker 2: that age is not the most real concern that there
Speaker 2: really is about Joe Iidadley. Even put the policy and
Speaker 2: all that other side, there's basically no defense of it,
Speaker 2: which is why most people aren't even able to acknowledge it,
Speaker 2: you know, Crystal, In my opinion, the only reason that
Speaker 2: the media is even able or even has to address
Speaker 2: this is because poll after poll after poll shows that
Speaker 2: it is the number one concern, not just of all voters,
Speaker 2: but even of the vast majority of Democratic voters.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a little little prediction to make here
Speaker 1: based on our past experience in twenty twenty, when there
Speaker 1: was a period of time where it was okay to
Speaker 1: talk about his decline, it was okay to talk about
Speaker 1: his age. And then once it was clear that you know,
Speaker 1: Pete or Kamala or Beto or whoever the other media
Speaker 1: candidates you know, were weren't going to succeed, then suddenly
Speaker 1: you couldn't talk about it. You know, it was ablest,
Speaker 1: this is just his stutter, etc. And so I think
Speaker 1: we'll see a similar thing. There's still some wish casting
Speaker 1: right now in the media that maybe he'll step aside,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get the candidate of our dreams, Pete Bootage
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so some of this talk is allowed.
Speaker 1: And also to your point, I mean, the poll numbers
Speaker 1: are just overwhelming and sort of indisputable and undeniable, so
Speaker 1: it is kind of hard to avoid. We've also seen
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting about how internally, I mean, they
Speaker 1: know that this is an issue, they've been brainstorming, or
Speaker 1: how do we attack it, how do we address it,
Speaker 1: how do we perhaps use humor to get around this,
Speaker 1: Maybe we channel sort of Ronald Reagan?
Speaker 5: How do we do these things?
Speaker 1: I would actually feel totally different about this issue if
Speaker 1: Biden was willing to subject himself to a just regular
Speaker 1: democratic process, subject himself to a bunch of interviews, including
Speaker 1: some contentious interviews, not just like puff pieces with wellness
Speaker 1: experts or whatever. If he would do debates and put
Speaker 1: himself out on stage, and then people can judge for themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, because age is one factor weighed against a
Speaker 1: whole variety of other factors, and Donald Trump is no
Speaker 1: young man himself, so there's a lot to consider here.
Speaker 1: It's not like this is the determintive one and only thing,
Speaker 1: But you're not even giving people the chance to really
Speaker 1: assess how you are and whether or not you're truly
Speaker 1: up to the job. So I would feel differently about
Speaker 1: these things if he was willing to subject himself truly
Speaker 1: to the rigors of a real democratic process, but he
Speaker 1: is in and by the way, Trump isn't either from
Speaker 1: what we've seen thus far with him skipping his debates.
Speaker 1: Nate Silver had a good write up just looking at
Speaker 1: the numbers of you know, is this a legitimate issue.
Speaker 1: Is there a big difference between the age that Biden
Speaker 1: was when he started, between the age that Trump is
Speaker 1: versus where Biden is now versus where Biden will be
Speaker 1: when if he finishes the second term. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen, and basically, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at the numbers here effectively the actuary
Speaker 1: ial tables, it makes a big difference. You can see
Speaker 1: the way that the chance of death in the upcoming
Speaker 1: year basically skyrockets, especially over the age of eighty.
Speaker 5: So you see this chart.
Speaker 1: This depicts the annual risk of death or an American
Speaker 1: non Hispanic white male, which applies to both by Nan
Speaker 1: Trump in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty cording to the
Speaker 1: CDC at age seventy and just keep this up on
Speaker 1: the screen, guys, so people have the visual at age
Speaker 1: seventy and eight, Silver rights Trump's age when he was
Speaker 1: inaugurated for his first term. The risk of death in
Speaker 1: the upcoming year for a white American man is two
Speaker 1: point four percent, so not nothing, but you know, on
Speaker 1: the lower side, by age seventy eight, that'll be Trump's
Speaker 1: age in twenty twenty five, that risk has roughly doubled
Speaker 1: to almost five percent.
Speaker 5: At eighty two.
Speaker 1: Biden's age if he is reinaugurated in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: it's increased further to seven point three percent. And the
Speaker 1: risk of dying in a given year is eleven percent
Speaker 1: by age eighty six, which would be Biden's age at
Speaker 1: the end of his second term.
Speaker 5: So by the.
Speaker 1: Time his second term would be over, he would have
Speaker 1: a more than one in ten chance of dying in
Speaker 1: that year. This is a serious consideration, especially when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about, all right, who's the vice presidential Canada, how
Speaker 1: I feel about that person. Furthermore, according to the Alzheimer's Association,
Speaker 1: this age rain is also associated with a sharp increase
Speaker 1: in Alzheimer's dementia, which by the way, was a concern
Speaker 1: and a valid one in Ronald Reagan's second term. So
Speaker 1: Nate Silver basically making the case here that voters are
Speaker 1: worried about it, and they're not long to be worried
Speaker 1: about it. And just to underscore how much voters are
Speaker 1: worried about it, put this next chart up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We can see three fourths of US adults say Biden
Speaker 1: is too old for a second term. It is overwhelming
Speaker 1: among Republicans certainly eighty nine percent. It's overwhelming among independence
Speaker 1: seventy four percent. It's overwhelming among Democrats, sixty nine percent
Speaker 1: say that Biden is too old, and roughly the same
Speaker 1: number of Democrats say Trump is too old as well.
Speaker 1: The numbers for Trump among Independents are forty eight percent
Speaker 1: and among Republicans much lower at twenty eight percent. So overall,
Speaker 1: freeforce of US adults say Biden is too old for
Speaker 1: a second term. Now, as I said, is this the
Speaker 1: only thing voters are weighing no, it's not the only thing.
Speaker 1: But is this a significant and legitimate factor for people
Speaker 1: to be thinking about. Of course it absolutely is.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's no question.
Speaker 2: And you know, something that he actually does a good
Speaker 2: job is contextualizing it in terms of people who are
Speaker 2: also very elderly, but in in positions of high power. So,
Speaker 2: for example, he even lands on Fortune five hundred CEOs.
Speaker 2: He says that of that there are only two current
Speaker 2: Fortune five hundred CEOs who are over the age of
Speaker 2: over the age of seventy seven, Warren Buffett and Roger Penske.
Speaker 2: No current US governor is older than seventy eight. And quote,
Speaker 2: while there are quite a few US old senators, we
Speaker 2: are seeing serious consequences from that, be it Mitch McConnell
Speaker 2: or Dianne Feinstein's manifestly diminished capacities.
Speaker 3: And as he.
Speaker 2: Points out, the presidency arguably is even more of a
Speaker 2: stressful job than the Fortune five hundred CEO job. I
Speaker 2: encourage people, if you ever bear in Washington, go to
Speaker 2: the National Portrait Gallery and go look at the mask
Speaker 2: made of Abraham Lincoln's face, which was made in eighteen sixty,
Speaker 2: I believe, And then look at the mass that was
Speaker 2: taken of his face on the day that he died
Speaker 2: in eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 3: The lines that are.
Speaker 2: Into his forehead, the gaunt nature of his cheeks shows
Speaker 2: the sheer amount of stress that exerted on him in
Speaker 2: just a four and a half year period during the
Speaker 2: Civil War. I'm not comparing that to current times, but
Speaker 2: I'm just giving people of idea.
Speaker 3: In the worst of times, this job will kill you. FDR.
Speaker 2: I mean, unquestionably, he of course had problems, but the
Speaker 2: stress of World War Two. In twelve years in the presidency,
Speaker 2: he was a dead man. By the time he was
Speaker 2: reelected for his fourth term. He only lived like eighty
Speaker 2: days into that term. There are a serious consequences to
Speaker 2: covering this stuff up, and I will always remind people
Speaker 2: we had this conversation in the Reagan years where Reagan currently,
Speaker 2: as you said, Chryssel proved himself via the democratic process
Speaker 2: by charging and turning around his age on Walter Mondale, and.
Speaker 3: He was only sixty eight when he's right.
Speaker 2: Resident, He's a spring chicken compared to both of these guys.
Speaker 2: So I think Silver does a fantastic job of laying
Speaker 2: out the very legitimate concern and the most important thing
Speaker 2: to underscore two on those probabilities. That is not the
Speaker 2: cumulative chance of death, the annual chance of death right
Speaker 2: more than one in ten chance of dropping dead of
Speaker 2: natural causes in your last year while you're in office.
Speaker 2: And that is for people who are not in the
Speaker 2: most stressful job on the world, who are retired hopefully
Speaker 2: you know, sitting on a porch or you know, even
Speaker 2: whenever they're in good health, even the most minuscule thing
Speaker 2: can take you out when you're that old.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that is true.
Speaker 1: So I mean board to keep those numbers in mind,
Speaker 1: and also just to not allow the media to gaslight
Speaker 1: you that this is not a legitimate issue. Of course,
Speaker 1: is a legitimate issue to consider. I mean, obviously these
Speaker 1: men are elderly, so that makes the choice not too
Speaker 1: appealing on either side. We also have new evidence that
Speaker 1: these concerns about Biden's age and also concerns about his
Speaker 1: economic stewardship are really weighing on him in terms of reelection.
Speaker 5: Put this up on the screen front of the Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal.
Speaker 1: They say Biden's age, economic worries, and danger reelection.
Speaker 5: In twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Four, nearly three quarters of voters say the president is
Speaker 1: too old to run again. We're just discussing some of
Speaker 1: those numbers. You can leave this up on the screen
Speaker 1: for a moment. You can see the approve or disapprove
Speaker 1: of the job that Joe Biden is doing on each
Speaker 1: of the following On the economy, he's only I think
Speaker 1: that's like se thirty seven percent approve of his handling
Speaker 1: of the economy. You know, even poorer results on inflation
Speaker 1: and rising costs, then even poorer results again in terms
Speaker 1: of securing the border. He does decently well on improving infrastructure,
Speaker 1: but you know, I mean these and actually decently well
Speaker 1: on creating jobs, which is kind of interesting that there's
Speaker 1: a significant separation between how people feel about the economy
Speaker 1: overall and how they feel about job creation and.
Speaker 5: The unemployment rate.
Speaker 1: You know, it really underscores the fact that, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a low unemployment rate, there are a good number of
Speaker 1: jobs out there, but are they good jobs? Are you
Speaker 1: able to afford a house, are you able to afford
Speaker 1: a car? Are you able to afford just to make
Speaker 1: ends meet at the end of the month. Just to
Speaker 1: dig into these numbers a little bit more, I think
Speaker 1: this is a big problem for Joe Biden by.
Speaker 5: An eleven point margin.
Speaker 1: More voter see Trump rather than Biden, as having a
Speaker 1: record of accomplishments as president. Some forty percent said Biden
Speaker 1: has such a record. Fifty one percent said so of
Speaker 1: Trump by an eight point margin. More voters said Trump
Speaker 1: has a vision for the future, and by ten points
Speaker 1: more described Trump as mentally up to the presidency. Some
Speaker 1: forty six percent said that is true of Trump. So
Speaker 1: not even a majority for Trump, but better than the
Speaker 1: thirty six percent who said so of Biden. Now, how
Speaker 1: do you square this, these numbers and this perception from
Speaker 1: the American people with the fact that, you know, you
Speaker 1: did have things passed during the Biden administration. You had
Speaker 1: the Recovery Act Early, you had the Infrastructure Act, you
Speaker 1: had the Chips Act, you had the Packed Act, you
Speaker 1: had the.
Speaker 5: Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 1: You've had, you know, accomplishments in terms of anti trust
Speaker 1: things I really care about and that I think will
Speaker 1: be really important over the long term, in terms of
Speaker 1: unions in the National Labor Relations Board. How do you
Speaker 1: square that with these numbers where people feel like, actually,
Speaker 1: I think Trump accomplished more. Well. What I would argue, Sager,
Speaker 1: is that over the course of the Biden administration, the
Speaker 1: story has been one of gradually stripping away all of
Speaker 1: the supports that were constructed under the Trump and Biden
Speaker 1: administrations to deal with the pandemic. So while infrastructure is
Speaker 1: good for the long term, chips ACKed good for the
Speaker 1: long term, union, you know, improving the odds for union organizing,
Speaker 1: good for the long term. In terms of the short term,
Speaker 1: the experience has been number one, inflation and number two,
Speaker 1: these things that were helping me are going away. I'm
Speaker 1: having to rack up insane amounts of credit card debt
Speaker 1: and other types of debt.
Speaker 5: I'm getting behind.
Speaker 1: I'm about to have to restart my student loan debt payments.
Speaker 1: And I don't even understand these, you know, complicated procedures.
Speaker 1: People have the perception, not just the perception, the reality
Speaker 1: that things have gotten more difficult for them over the
Speaker 1: course of the Biden administration, and so it makes all
Speaker 1: the sense in the world that they would be unhappy
Speaker 1: with his economic stewardship. And you know, basically giving Trump
Speaker 1: another shot and a toss up race that is has
Speaker 1: a fifth fifty chance of going in either direction.
Speaker 2: At this point, I would also argue there is there
Speaker 2: was a Kennedy term that was in vogue at the
Speaker 2: time in the nineteen sixties about vigor and when they
Speaker 2: looked at Kennedy, they felt that he was a vigorous
Speaker 2: man and he was vigorously attacking the problems that we had.
Speaker 2: As I've said before, a lot of that ended up
Speaker 2: being methamphetamine that was being injected into him, but the
Speaker 2: appearance was there nonetheless. And the point I think is
Speaker 2: that with inflation, it said so much of this, people
Speaker 2: want to go back and roll the tape from over
Speaker 2: two years ago. I'm like, listen, people are not stupid.
Speaker 2: They know that you're not solely responsible for the price
Speaker 2: of gas, but they do need to feel as if
Speaker 2: you were attacking it with vigor every single day.
Speaker 3: He didn't do anything with the spr and they drained it.
Speaker 2: Hasn't refilled it since then, actually left us more vulnerable.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was.
Speaker 2: A sense, at least a small sense I think of
Speaker 2: vigor ish in the first like two to three months
Speaker 2: of the presidency. I think he really killed himself by
Speaker 2: bringing back mask mandates and all the other nonsense. For
Speaker 2: the first year or so, he got himself totally derailed
Speaker 2: by COVID and during that time when we had supply
Speaker 2: chains all that explode with the pricing, with inflation. He'd
Speaker 2: never let himself get ahead of the ball. He always
Speaker 2: says behind it, and he's basically fallen way behind it
Speaker 2: ever since. Even in some of the things they're talking about, Crystal,
Speaker 2: it's all been half measured. So like on the union front,
Speaker 2: be like, yeah, he ruled this nice way on the NLRB,
Speaker 2: I mean, asked the railway workers how that worked out
Speaker 2: for him?
Speaker 3: You know, at the time, I ask why.
Speaker 2: And we're going to do a whole segment on this
Speaker 2: later about the UAW and why they refuse to endorse
Speaker 2: by it. And there's just been a series of things
Speaker 2: that were done that were not done in the most
Speaker 2: wholehearted manner. Now, look on the Trump front, I think
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why is because A. Trump was
Speaker 2: the beneficiary, of course of the zero registrate phenomenon. He
Speaker 2: had the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But also, you know,
Speaker 2: even though people vigorously again attacked his approach to COVID,
Speaker 2: let's say, on the actual like COVID front, you can't
Speaker 2: deny the economic things that were put into place under
Speaker 2: his presidency. And a lot of the structural things that
Speaker 2: were done by him, or at least by his administration
Speaker 2: specifically at that end period of which people can't just
Speaker 2: look back and I mean, Paul show this very fondly
Speaker 2: as to twenty nineteen. Some of that could be, you know,
Speaker 2: just wanting to go back to the past, but I
Speaker 2: do think part of it goes back to that story.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, Biden's inability to like, you know, his
Speaker 2: whole pitch was returned to normal and almost like a
Speaker 2: normal plus vision, Well, that requires a ton of work,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't do the work. I think that's what
Speaker 2: And I think people can feel that very very very
Speaker 2: deeply whenever they look at his presidency, and I don't
Speaker 2: think they're wrong whenever they look at the structural conditions
Speaker 2: in their lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they got freaked out by the I
Speaker 1: think they took the wrong approach on inflation. They got
Speaker 1: freaked out by you know, the Larry Summers of the world,
Speaker 1: who told them, you know, the only thing that's driving
Speaker 1: this is government spending, and you got to pull back
Speaker 1: on all these programs. And I'm not saying that that
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it, but it's become increasingly
Speaker 1: clear over time that corporate profiteering was a larger percentage
Speaker 1: of it than even I thought at the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: the numbers just spare that out, that actually a majority
Speaker 1: of the inflation was corporate profiteering.
Speaker 5: You had all these supply chain issues.
Speaker 1: And we were calling for him from the beginning to
Speaker 1: aggressively go out and go after these corporate profiteers and
Speaker 1: do everything he could to call them on the carpet
Speaker 1: to bring down prices. He didn't do that, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there was It's unfortunate because the real turning
Speaker 1: point in his approval rating, if we're being honest, is
Speaker 1: actually when he did one of the best things of
Speaker 1: his presidency, which was to withdraw from Afghanistan. But you
Speaker 1: had a uni media moment of you know, this horrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was a total media story. But in
Speaker 1: terms of the enduring low nature of his approval ratings,
Speaker 1: you can see really clearly the story of his administration
Speaker 1: at the beginning, when they were doing stuff and people
Speaker 1: were getting checks in their bank accounts, guess what, his
Speaker 1: approval rating was really high, and people felt really good
Speaker 1: about his stewardship at the economy. When they stopped doing
Speaker 1: stuff that helped people and started stripping away all of
Speaker 1: the programs that were helping people.
Speaker 5: Guess what his economic.
Speaker 1: Approval ratings and overall approval ratings fall off a cliff
Speaker 1: and stay there. So that is how you're in the
Speaker 1: situation now where it's a jump ball. Now you may ask,
Speaker 1: given this analysis, why does he even have a shot
Speaker 1: at winning? And I don't just think he has a shot.
Speaker 1: He's been come at president. I think he has better
Speaker 1: than a fifty to fifty chance of winning reelection if
Speaker 1: he ends up being the Democratic nominee. Why Well, within
Speaker 1: the same poll you've got Biden viewed significantly more favorably
Speaker 1: than Trump on personal characteristics. Forty eight percent of voters
Speaker 1: think Biden is likable. That's compared with thirty one percent
Speaker 1: for Trump. Forty five percent you Biden is honest, Thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent say that of Trump. You have a polster
Speaker 1: who's quoted here and this is actually one of Trump's posters.
Speaker 1: He pulls for Trumps super pac Tony Fabrizio, who says,
Speaker 1: if this race is about personality and temperament, Biden has
Speaker 1: an advantage. If the race is about policies and performance,
Speaker 1: Trump has the advantage, and I think that that is
Speaker 1: probably accurate. Last thing to throw into the mix here,
Speaker 1: and then we've got an amazing CNN clip we want
Speaker 1: to or not CNN, Sorry, Stephanopolis, Yeah, ABC, right, this
Speaker 1: clip we want to show for you. But they also
Speaker 1: interviewed someone who had been a Biden's supporter back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty because he hates Trump and he wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that Trump was not re elected. But this time,
Speaker 1: this man, who they describe as a fifty seven year
Speaker 1: old investor based in Phoenix who describes himself as an independent,
Speaker 1: this time he's leaning towards supporting Cordell West Do impart
Speaker 1: his frustration with Biden's inability to deliver on his promise
Speaker 1: to overhaul policing in America. There's no goddamn police reform
Speaker 1: out here. They are still killing people. I voted for
Speaker 1: Biden because I knew he can heal, but he's just
Speaker 1: not doing enough right now. So some of those key
Speaker 1: supporters who last time around voted for Biden as a
Speaker 1: bulwark against Trump are saying, you know what, he hasn't
Speaker 1: done enough.
Speaker 5: This time. I'm going in a different direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're going to see that on the people
Speaker 2: who held their nose for him as well, who are
Speaker 2: more conservative voters, and you know, all around.
Speaker 3: You're just seeing in the erosion of support.
Speaker 2: We brought you the pod save Piece last show, which
Speaker 2: I think really hit it all home as UTAs already
Speaker 2: ABC's your Stephnopolis is like, I just can't believe it.
Speaker 2: I just can't understand why he's I connect with Trump.
Speaker 2: Let's take a lesson, don Let's begin with the presidential race.
Speaker 2: I don't ask you the question I asked Tim Kaine
Speaker 2: towards the end there. It is kind of shocking in
Speaker 2: a way that despite all of the baggage of Donald
Speaker 2: Trump carries, he's tied with Joe Biden right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean George.
Speaker 6: When I looked at that recent pull the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 6: I said.
Speaker 7: Oh, this could keep me up. And I look.
Speaker 6: The problem is and the biggest challenge we face is Democrats.
Speaker 6: I say we because I'm a Democrat, is that young voters,
Speaker 6: young Black and Latino voters, they're not ready to.
Speaker 7: Come back to the party.
Speaker 5: They are not.
Speaker 6: Even looking at the so called messaging that's being sent
Speaker 6: to them about the economy, about climate change, about student.
Speaker 3: Debt, relief.
Speaker 2: Well, well, well, like you just said, a lot of
Speaker 2: young voters who are Democrats are very upset whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to the Joe Biden presidency. And that's the thing too,
Speaker 2: They're like, I just can't believe it. You know, these indictments. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it turns out the indictments, I really haven't done a
Speaker 2: damn thing. Now, listen, we will see it's possible. Stop
Speaker 2: the steal didn't show up in a lot of the
Speaker 2: polling in twenty twenty, so I a twenty twenty too.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to sit here and just say that
Speaker 2: it's a total write off.
Speaker 3: We could have the exact same phenomenon going on right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do encourage people always remember that in the
Speaker 2: back of your mind. Stop the still and abortion remained
Speaker 2: dramatically underpolled in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: So if you want to.
Speaker 2: Consider what the bullish case for Biden would be, that's
Speaker 2: what I would rely on. But as it seems right now,
Speaker 2: it's still tough race, and regardless of what it is,
Speaker 2: you should still, you know, you should fight like hell
Speaker 2: in order to try and win.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's doing that at all.
Speaker 1: It is ironic that don in Brazil, the former head
Speaker 1: of the DNZ, who is more responsible for preserving this
Speaker 1: version of the Democratic Party, the you know Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden version of the Democratic Party than
Speaker 1: you know few other people right involved in all the
Speaker 1: rigging at the DNC to make sure that the Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders movement was sidelined, to shut down and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff that she's now.
Speaker 5: I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: Yep, how come these young voters they don't like the
Speaker 1: Democratic But I just don't get it. Is keeping me
Speaker 1: up at night. I don't know, you know, young young people,
Speaker 1: African Americans, latinum and I just don't get what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's like you designed it. I mean, it doesn't compute
Speaker 1: for them because it goes against their whole political philosophy
Speaker 1: of like let's do the bare minimum and let's just
Speaker 1: be a little bit better than the other guys, and
Speaker 1: let's make sure that we're just you know, staying towards
Speaker 1: the center quote unquote and not really delivering for people
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. Let's make sure that we crush
Speaker 1: all these young people who have these big ideas of
Speaker 1: how much better the country go. Let's make sure, we
Speaker 1: crush their hopes and dreams and aspirations. Then oh, why
Speaker 1: won't they vote for us? Why aren't they excited about us? Gee,
Speaker 1: I wonder why, Donna? Yeah.
Speaker 7: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: There was another piece that we wanted to get to here,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting exchange between Barstool's Dave Portnoy and
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson discussing age with regard to both Trump and Biden,
Speaker 1: and also discussing Trump's absence from the first gopee debate.
Speaker 1: A lot of people took note of this. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen, Like.
Speaker 8: I thought Trump should have done. I thought he should
Speaker 8: have done the debate. Like to me, if you're voting on
Speaker 8: the president, you want to hear him debate. He's brilliant.
Speaker 8: He's the best to ever play the polital little game.
Speaker 8: So to become president, I think it was the right
Speaker 8: moove not to do it, But for the better room
Speaker 8: of the country, I think.
Speaker 7: You should be on the I kind of agree.
Speaker 9: I'd like the debates personally, I mean, how else is
Speaker 9: people going to decide the problem is that the news
Speaker 9: companies that host the debates are so rotten and corrupt,
Speaker 9: and everybody knows it. The whole thing's are wrong now,
Speaker 9: the whole thing is rotten and corupt.
Speaker 3: Is Biden going to be the dominie?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I'm not a little person, but I feel like there's
Speaker 8: been a shift where internally maybe the Democrats don't think
Speaker 8: he can win, and they're setting the stage to do
Speaker 8: somebody else. I think it's crazy if he's I mean,
Speaker 8: to be honest, I think both Trump and Biden are
Speaker 8: too old. I think there should I don't think you
Speaker 8: should be able to be that old and be president.
Speaker 7: But I think Trump more aware.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think Biden has got some serious dementia issues.
Speaker 8: How that is the president I don't know. And that's
Speaker 8: not a Democrat because I said about both. It's like Mitch, Mitch,
Speaker 8: the guy who had the stroke doing the speech the
Speaker 8: other day, Mitch McConnell, Yeah, like, what how are these
Speaker 8: people running our country? You want to put these people?
Speaker 9: I would say mcconnald's The only defense I would say
Speaker 9: of Mitch McConnell is McConnell's poststroke is an improvement over McConnell.
Speaker 3: Pretty stroke.
Speaker 5: What does he make that soccer look?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think he represents frustration. I mean Dave.
Speaker 2: Look, he says he's not a Trump supporter. Now, I
Speaker 2: think he said he's moved on.
Speaker 10: He was.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know.
Speaker 3: I mean definitely did.
Speaker 2: In twenty fifteen he wrote the whole thing about how
Speaker 2: he supported Trump and then obviously interviewed Trump in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't call him a supporter per se, like it was.
Speaker 2: He's a cultural figure much more than political, which is
Speaker 2: why he kind of interests me and whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to these things.
Speaker 3: I did think it was significant though, about what he said.
Speaker 2: He said, I think that these two men are too old,
Speaker 2: But he was like, how are people supposed to decide?
Speaker 2: And I think that was a great normy view into
Speaker 2: how a lot of people will look at Biden's decision
Speaker 2: not to participate in democratic debates and Trump not participating
Speaker 2: in debates now to be fair GOP primary voters and
Speaker 2: going to care about that at all. But I think
Speaker 2: that people who are more outside of the political process
Speaker 2: are like, well, you know, these things kind of are important.
Speaker 2: And you know, we even saw Crystal, did you really
Speaker 2: expect the pop Not even our show, but in general
Speaker 2: of the media attention that was showed to the GOP
Speaker 2: primary debate without Trump, I didn't. I can tell you
Speaker 2: that right now. We saw an extraordinary amount of interest
Speaker 2: from a lot of people. Of course our audience, he's
Speaker 2: disproportionately young, and I think that's because people like seeing
Speaker 2: an actual exchange.
Speaker 3: They like seeing somebody get pressed on something. They like
Speaker 3: seeing how people interact with each other.
Speaker 2: We got a lot out of that debate in some ways,
Speaker 2: you know, especially for specifically also the Nicki Haley versus Ramaswami,
Speaker 2: the Hense and what was going on DeSantis's decision to
Speaker 2: like put himself above the frame, and then the subsequent
Speaker 2: movement there that we have seen since about how the
Speaker 2: anti Trump vote really taking a big look over at
Speaker 2: Nicki Haley Ramaswamy remaining more static than we expected because
Speaker 2: a lot of those people are just Trump people. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's there's so much to learn, I think from these things.
Speaker 2: And I think that he really put his nail. He
Speaker 2: really understood there that he's like, well, how are people
Speaker 2: supposed to decide?
Speaker 3: How is people supposed to evaluate?
Speaker 11: There?
Speaker 2: Just hits home what you were saying earlier, which is like, look,
Speaker 2: I think you know, as with Reagan, Reagan's genius was
Speaker 2: that he campaigned very hard and that he disarmed people,
Speaker 2: and he was like, no, I'm not too old to
Speaker 2: be president. I Biden has to convince people, probably triple
Speaker 2: times more what Reagan did, and instead he's probably doing
Speaker 2: I would say, less than one third of what Reagan
Speaker 2: actually did when he was running for president.
Speaker 1: Would have been nice if Tucker had pressed Trump on
Speaker 1: any of this when he sat for him for an
Speaker 1: interview during the debate. Would have been nice to see
Speaker 1: him pressed on those things. I continue listen. Unfortunately, for Biden, politically,
Speaker 1: it is the right decision. I think it's abhorrent. I
Speaker 1: think it's disgraceful. I think it's anti democratic for him
Speaker 1: to not even you know, submit himself whatsoever to a
Speaker 1: democratic process.
Speaker 5: However, given how.
Speaker 1: He presents and how he would likely perform on a
Speaker 1: debate stage, politically, I think it's a no brainer what
Speaker 1: they're doing, and his basement strategy. Recreating the basement strategy
Speaker 1: is probably the best thing he could possibly do, because
Speaker 1: I just don't think he has the goods right For Trump,
Speaker 1: I continue to think there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: danger in the strategy, A little bit of danger because
Speaker 1: you are allowing people to see these other candidates. You
Speaker 1: are allowing these other candidates to grab some of the
Speaker 1: headlines and some of the spotlight. You are allowing Republican
Speaker 1: primary voters to imagine a post Trump party and consider, Okay,
Speaker 1: if Trump was not in the picture, who would be
Speaker 1: my chosen candidate? And you know, none of them are
Speaker 1: my cup of tea. But I think for Republican based
Speaker 1: voters there was a lot that they probably wherever they
Speaker 1: fall in the Republican spectrum, they probably saw someone on
Speaker 1: that stage that they were like, you know what, that
Speaker 1: person was good. I like them, I like their paws,
Speaker 1: I like how they present themselves. Whatever.
Speaker 5: So I continue to think.
Speaker 1: There is a little bit of danger for Trump. Do
Speaker 1: I think that it is likely to, you know, end
Speaker 1: up being an issue for him? No, not likely, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's a little risky, and he's very good
Speaker 1: at debates. I have lots of issues with Trump, but
Speaker 1: as a political performer, Porter is right, there's no one
Speaker 1: better in the political game in terms of just sheer
Speaker 1: performance value than Donald Trump. And so pushing aside the
Speaker 1: opportunity for him to go out and like show, like
Speaker 1: do his thing that he does better than anyone else,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's actually the right call. I think
Speaker 1: he's actually made a small mistake. Again, is it going
Speaker 1: to be a determinedive? But is it a little bit
Speaker 1: of a missed opportunity for him?
Speaker 2: Yes, well that's what he's betting on, is that that
Speaker 2: the risk would be too high. I think he should
Speaker 2: have more confidence than himself. He's obviously, you.
Speaker 3: Know, after what we saw him like ot Trump wouldn't
Speaker 3: uke to that whole thing. He would absolutely dominate at
Speaker 3: the stage.
Speaker 2: So yeah, look, you know he's a student, probably the
Speaker 2: best media manipulator in the history of the American presidency.
Speaker 2: And if anybody would study it incorrect, I think it
Speaker 2: would be him. Let's move on to Ukraine. You guys
Speaker 2: are going to be amazed. We are now allowed to
Speaker 2: talk about pervasive, rampant corruption at the highest levels in
Speaker 2: the Ukrainian government. Why because Zelenski has now given us
Speaker 2: permission to do so. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. The President of Ukraine kind of
Speaker 2: stunning the world by firing the chief Defense Minister of
Speaker 2: Ukraine for military graft and corruption. And some of the
Speaker 2: details that the media has now allowed itself to report
Speaker 2: on are you know, just as stunning and are as
Speaker 2: obvious as people who have been watching this conflict from
Speaker 2: the day one.
Speaker 3: They point to the fact that quote the removal of the.
Speaker 2: Defense minister highlights the enduring challenge of corruption in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: which has emerged as quote a rare area of criticism
Speaker 2: of Vladimir Zelensky's leadership.
Speaker 3: Who made that criticism rare? I do wonder about that.
Speaker 2: It's, of course, these two media outlets who are only
Speaker 2: doing it after the man has already been fired, or
Speaker 2: at very least he offered his resignation. But one of
Speaker 2: the things that really came out to me, Crystal, was
Speaker 2: the specificity of the claim, and this claim itself that
Speaker 2: shows you how obvious so much more of the corruption
Speaker 2: that we are overwhelmingly bankrolling.
Speaker 7: Here.
Speaker 2: Let me just read this part quote. At one point,
Speaker 2: just this year, nine hundred and eighty million dollars in
Speaker 2: weapons contracts missed their delivery dates, according to the official
Speaker 2: government figure, and some pre payments for weapons quote vanished
Speaker 2: into overseas accounts of weapons dealers. Let's be clear, this
Speaker 2: is year and my money, this is our money, American dollars,
Speaker 2: taxpayer dollars of which we have no inspector general and
Speaker 2: no oversight. Also, let me remind everybody of this. The
Speaker 2: Treasury Department under the Biden administration has said we have
Speaker 2: seen no indication of any corruption going on in Ukraine
Speaker 2: because we are obviously looking at the situation. The hilarious
Speaker 2: part this is the Ukrainian government. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian government being more honest about their corruption than our
Speaker 2: government about their corruption about our tax dollars, they say.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: Though precise details have not emerged, irregularities suggests procurement officials
Speaker 2: in the ministry did not vet suppliers, allowed weapons dealers
Speaker 2: to walk off out with money without delivering armaments. That
Speaker 2: is on top of the actual specific scandal that was
Speaker 2: uncovered under this defense minister's leadership where they were charging
Speaker 2: at one point forty seven cents US dollar for a
Speaker 2: single egg per egg, it was being supplied massive overpayment
Speaker 2: for food. Go ahead, and guess who the people who
Speaker 2: were supplying the food, the cronies and the friends. We'd
Speaker 2: seen the Zelenski government attack some of this. The thing
Speaker 2: is too is they don't actually care. You know why
Speaker 2: they're doing this. It's because people like us, Crystal people
Speaker 2: in the US Congress and all over the world are like, hey,
Speaker 2: what's actually going on with our money? If we're going
Speaker 2: to give you even more money, they're like, oh, we're
Speaker 2: going to make a big show about doing something about corruption.
Speaker 2: My personal favorite line was a flag by Byron New
Speaker 2: York Let's put this up there on the screen, which
Speaker 2: says that inside of Ukraine before the invasion, the primary
Speaker 2: source of embezzlement had been poorly run state companies. Money
Speaker 2: was siphoned off by wealthy insiders.
Speaker 12: Quote.
Speaker 2: Anti corrupt groups now say that the huge influx of
Speaker 2: funds to support the war have prompted them to shift
Speaker 2: focus to military spending.
Speaker 3: Oh really, that's very interesting.
Speaker 2: I can't help but think of that CBS News report
Speaker 2: from the earlier days of the wars, of the first
Speaker 2: three months in and they talked about misdelivery, about procurement,
Speaker 2: about rampant corruption, about all of that. And CBS News
Speaker 2: retracted their report that was on the ground and was
Speaker 2: directly factual because of criticism from the Ukrainian government who
Speaker 2: were like, no, no, no, that's out of date. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: even if it is out of date, it's still true.
Speaker 2: Was it factually true or not? They're like, it's out
Speaker 2: of context. Well, it wasn't out of context. It's a
Speaker 2: simple fact that there was a massive misdelivery of arms
Speaker 2: and everything you read about how things work out there,
Speaker 2: we're literally talking about crates of brand new US provided
Speaker 2: weapons top off of a bit of a truck to
Speaker 2: open up the back and they're like, all right, anybody
Speaker 2: who wants you can come and get it.
Speaker 3: We don't know who these people are.
Speaker 2: We're talking about militias, some of whom have terrible ideology
Speaker 2: and are connected, you know, to long standing like Nazi groups.
Speaker 2: That is not again to say that this all Ukrainians
Speaker 2: are in the military or whatever are Nazis, but there's
Speaker 2: no denying that our weapons are obviously in their hands
Speaker 2: and they were fighting on behalf of the government. More so, Crystal,
Speaker 2: the desperation going on in Ukraine right now is stunning.
Speaker 2: I mean, they have lowered the bar dramatically for the
Speaker 2: amount of eligible men who are fit for service, in
Speaker 2: some cases people who are like HIV positive you know,
Speaker 2: who previously would have been disallowed from serving. That is
Speaker 2: not the action of a confident military that has an
Speaker 2: endless amount of supply here. It is the time, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: time on or tradition of people who are bleeding men
Speaker 2: in an attritional conflict that happened in the South in
Speaker 2: the American Civil War, happened during World War One with
Speaker 2: all the great power militaries that were sending men into
Speaker 2: the meat grinder. So you put these two things together
Speaker 2: and structurally, clearly there is not signs of there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of good signs for the Krainanian military, and
Speaker 2: it confirms our nineteen month long now suspicion that graft
Speaker 2: and corruption is deeply embedded into the Ukrainian government society,
Speaker 2: which is not to put down the people themselves. Just
Speaker 2: to note the most obvious fact, it was one of
Speaker 2: the most country corrupt countries on planet Earth before the invasion.
Speaker 3: Why would anything change.
Speaker 2: That's like being surprised that half the amount of aid
Speaker 2: that we sent to Afghanistan was embezzled and now currently
Speaker 2: is sitting in a bank account in Dubai. Obvious to
Speaker 2: anybody knew anything about Afghanistan prior to our war that
Speaker 2: was going on there. So look again, this isn't to
Speaker 2: put down the people themselves or the soldiers who are
Speaker 2: fighting nobly. It really is to put down the leaders
Speaker 2: who we just bankroll without question, and it's very obvious
Speaker 2: here what's going on. And it's also note really to me,
Speaker 2: not one American official ever said one word about this
Speaker 2: in public. They only said it behind the scenes. And
Speaker 2: the Ukrainian government itself is taking better note of their
Speaker 2: corruption than we are.
Speaker 1: Not just the Ukrainian government, apparently the Ukrainian media, because
Speaker 1: what comes out to so is that you know, Ukrainian
Speaker 1: journalists and media there in country, they've been doing lots
Speaker 1: of investigative reporting into things like what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like the egg overpricing. There was another incident where you know,
Speaker 1: all these winter coats were shipped that were totally shody quality,
Speaker 1: not close to sufficient in terms of like actually keeping
Speaker 1: people warm in the cold Ukrainian winters. So they've done
Speaker 1: quite a bit of reporting about some of these these
Speaker 1: problems and these you know, contracts that are going to
Speaker 1: Crony's and that the Ukrainian government and by extension, are
Speaker 1: government and taxpayers are getting ripped off by. And it
Speaker 1: makes sense because of course the Ukrainian people, like they
Speaker 1: actually live in the country and they don't have this cartoonish,
Speaker 1: disnified version of their own government that we have here.
Speaker 1: A couple other things to note, just foreign policy. Put
Speaker 1: together a list of there's a new Department of Defense
Speaker 1: appropriations bill that needs to pass, and there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of relevant amendments that have been proposed here that
Speaker 1: are worth watching. Some of them have directly to do
Speaker 1: with Ukraine. There's a new effort to block the transfer
Speaker 1: of cluster bombs that will be proposed as part of this.
Speaker 1: There's also two this is interesting, two Republican amendments on
Speaker 1: the Azov Battalion. Azov Battalion sort of famously you know,
Speaker 1: Nazi neo Nazi roots, et cetera, but now part of
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian armed forces. There's one that's Proasov and there's
Speaker 1: one that's anti Azov, so that will be part of
Speaker 1: it as well. And of course this goes into tracking, Okay,
Speaker 1: where do these who's hands of these weapons end up in,
Speaker 1: which is obviously relevant in terms of corruption as well.
Speaker 1: The other thing to add that I think is part
Speaker 1: of why this anti corruption talk is coming out right
Speaker 1: now in terms of the US press, is Zelensky is
Speaker 1: acknowledging that corruption has been an issue and tacitly acknowledging
Speaker 1: it by some of the personnel changes that he's making.
Speaker 1: But then his solution is to override this somewhat independent
Speaker 1: board that's supposed to be looking at corruption and take
Speaker 1: matters into his own hands and charge anyone caught, you know,
Speaker 1: with some sort of corrupt deal with treason. So this
Speaker 1: is concerning because obviously if you put the entire enforcement
Speaker 1: in the hands of one person who has a history
Speaker 1: of going after political adversaries.
Speaker 5: And stifling descent, etc.
Speaker 1: Even US officials are raising alarms about this particular approach
Speaker 1: to cracking down on corruption. Of course, every you know,
Speaker 1: we certainly want to see corruption dealt with, but not
Speaker 1: in a way that's just going to be like used
Speaker 1: against us selectively against his political adversaries, versus an actual
Speaker 1: hole of government effort to make sure that the funds
Speaker 1: are going where they're supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Let's all just recall that pression shishingping has been a
Speaker 2: famous use of the same power, rooting out officials for corruption,
Speaker 2: And by that he means his friends are the ones
Speaker 2: who are the only ones allowed to do corruption, not
Speaker 2: the people who are as political As big a genius
Speaker 2: to see how it all works out, The secondary part
Speaker 2: of this is another extraordinary rebuke of the Biden administration
Speaker 2: and one I want to spend some time on today
Speaker 2: because it is one of the most unanalyzed, uncriticized parts
Speaker 2: of the Biden presidency which has always baffled me, and
Speaker 2: that is our treatment of North Korea.
Speaker 3: Say whatever you want about Trump.
Speaker 2: Trump shook up the geopolitical consensus in the US relationship
Speaker 2: with North Korea after they obtained the ability in order
Speaker 2: to have an ICBM successfully deliver a nuclear warhead to
Speaker 2: touch the United States.
Speaker 3: That was a complete strategic change of the calculus.
Speaker 2: And he said, you know what, we can't keep going
Speaker 2: down this path or we're going to end up in
Speaker 2: a war.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to go meet the guy, no preconditions.
Speaker 3: And you know what happened.
Speaker 2: We didn't have any military tests, we did missile tests,
Speaker 2: the Hermit Kingdom became a little less harmity, We had
Speaker 2: multiple US exchanges of diplomats. He ended up finishing his presidency.
Speaker 2: And what did the Biden administration do. They reverted exactly
Speaker 2: back to the Obama administration. They said, no talks without
Speaker 2: any time of denuclearization. And what did the North Koreans do?
Speaker 2: They started firing stuff off, scaring the crap out of
Speaker 2: our Japanese and South Korean allies, militarizing again, and now
Speaker 2: have been a main source of weapons for the Russians
Speaker 2: in Ukraine. And what's going on. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. Kim Jong un will be making
Speaker 2: a historic visit to Moscow to go and meet Putin
Speaker 2: sometime later this month. He will be or sorry I Vladivasstok,
Speaker 2: not Moscow. He will be aboard his armored train because
Speaker 2: he's too afraid to fly, which I always think is
Speaker 2: one of the funnier things about Kim jong un. But
Speaker 2: this is a historic, incredible trip for Kim Jong un
Speaker 2: in his premiership or presidency whatever they call it over there.
Speaker 2: More importantly, though, it is the sign of an emerging
Speaker 2: kind of tripartach pact between the three. We can laugh
Speaker 2: off North Korea all we want. Of course, you know,
Speaker 2: their economy, society, all of that is a disaster. But
Speaker 2: they knew how to do one thing. They have massive
Speaker 2: stockpiles of weapons. They have they're a nuclear armed power,
Speaker 2: and now they're entering into to a basically quasi alliance
Speaker 2: with the Russians, who are of course happy to take
Speaker 2: any weapons that they're going to give them because they
Speaker 2: need the money and more.
Speaker 3: So let's go and put this up there.
Speaker 2: They're actually, it seems going to be entering some likely
Speaker 2: North Korean three way drills, military drills unprecedented in all
Speaker 2: of history between North Korea, China, and Russia. So a
Speaker 2: reversion entirely back to the Cold War crystal you know,
Speaker 2: let's say, you know you're a big Ukraine stand who
Speaker 2: was out there. You should be furious because if the
Speaker 2: Biden administration had kept up diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang, we
Speaker 2: may not be in this situation. We may have some diplomacy,
Speaker 2: we may have an avenue to be like, hey, don't
Speaker 2: sell weapons over to the Rush.
Speaker 3: We'll help you guys out. What do you guys want?
Speaker 3: Or maybe we can do this.
Speaker 2: We can ease this sanction here, we can change things
Speaker 2: up here. So even if you do care about Ukraine,
Speaker 2: you should be angry about this. But this gives you
Speaker 2: a good view into when we revert to the old
Speaker 2: style talking points. We're just not going to engage or
Speaker 2: any of that. It's a disaster and this is what's
Speaker 2: happening here again.
Speaker 3: Laugh off. North Korea all you want. They've got an ICBM.
Speaker 2: They can wipe out Los Angeles, they can wipe out
Speaker 2: the island of Hawaii if they want to. Yes, many
Speaker 2: people in their country are starving. They have decided to
Speaker 2: dedicate their entire society to get it. And the Kim
Speaker 2: regime is not going anywhere anytime soon. So it is
Speaker 2: obvious we have to treat this with seriousness, and instead
Speaker 2: everybody laughs it off. This is still a this is
Speaker 2: a major, major diplomatic event that's happening, and of course,
Speaker 2: you know, Washington is ignoring the event, and we don't
Speaker 2: even have an avenue Crystal to go to Pyongyang as
Speaker 2: Mike Pompeo did, or even have some sort of summit
Speaker 2: and just be like, don't do this. We can make
Speaker 2: it worth your while. There's many different avenues that we
Speaker 2: could go down. We haven't exchanged a word with them
Speaker 2: now in years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, this is one of those issues that
Speaker 1: Trump was really attacked by, and he was I mean,
Speaker 1: this was such an example of the media attacking Trump
Speaker 1: for all of the wrong things because on many other
Speaker 1: areas he was way more hawkish than Biden. He was
Speaker 1: extremely hat actually with regards to Russia, extremely augish with
Speaker 1: regard to Iran in ways that were wildly irresponsible that
Speaker 1: have you know, made us less safe and.
Speaker 5: Killed engagement on that front.
Speaker 1: But on this one thing, his approach was clumsy and
Speaker 1: it didn't amount to everything, but the general direction was correct.
Speaker 1: The general instinct of hey, you know, what we've been
Speaker 1: what we've been trying to do here hasn't worked. And
Speaker 1: Biden has just gone back to that old way of
Speaker 1: thinking with regard to North Korea specifically that for years
Speaker 1: and years and years has not worked. And so you know, surprise,
Speaker 1: surprise when you get the same results that we got
Speaker 1: with this hawkish we're not.
Speaker 5: Going to talk to you.
Speaker 1: You know, all these preconditions approach that we had for so.
Speaker 3: Long exactly right.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's one of those where Trump was
Speaker 2: very proud of his engagement with Kim Jong un, and
Speaker 2: I still look in a low personal way that said
Speaker 2: it was for the best. We were safe for our
Speaker 2: allies who were actually productive members of our alliance, like
Speaker 2: Japan and like South Korea, were felt a lot better
Speaker 2: about it. They were pretty happy with the results of
Speaker 2: not having their citizens cowering and fear over being accidentally
Speaker 2: hit or a jet aircraft being hit by a North
Speaker 2: Korean missile. And now, like I said, North Korea, which
Speaker 2: has a massive stockpiles weapons for its possible war with
Speaker 2: the South that they've been preparing for for basically since
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three or whatever we signed the armistice, are
Speaker 2: happy to sell it at cost or not a little
Speaker 2: bit of a profit into the Russians and to secure
Speaker 2: the respect that the North Korean regime craves and desires.
Speaker 2: And you can hate them all you want, it won't
Speaker 2: take away there a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: We've learned that the hard way.
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton basically had the only chance in order to
Speaker 2: do something about it, he decided not to. From the
Speaker 2: Bush administration on the nuclear tests and the eventual attainment.
Speaker 3: Of the weapon, it is what it is.
Speaker 2: You know, when countries get a bomb, they get treated differently,
Speaker 2: and it's one of those where people just want to
Speaker 2: wish it away differently. But having a tripartite nuclear alliance
Speaker 2: are specifically around Russia and watching now as Chinese banks
Speaker 2: are stepping in to basically provide all the banking services
Speaker 2: that Russia used to get from the West. We're just
Speaker 2: bifurcating in a way that is not achieving the end
Speaker 2: result and is very likely making us all much much
Speaker 2: less safe as a result of this policy.
Speaker 5: I think that is all accurate.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, let's get to the really important story.
Speaker 5: Everyone is waiting to hear.
Speaker 1: World updates about the Burning Man Festival. Okay, So for
Speaker 1: people who aren't in the know, it's this annual festival
Speaker 1: happens really in the middle of nowhere in the desert,
Speaker 1: in this dried ancient lakebed one hundred miles from Reno, Nevada.
Speaker 5: Is the closest airport, etc.
Speaker 1: So it's the sort of like techno utopian libertarian vibes,
Speaker 1: you go. It's supposed to be about community and radical
Speaker 1: self reliance. And this year they had a huge rain
Speaker 1: event that you know, because it's the desert, because they're
Speaker 1: in this dried lakebed, created massive flooding and made the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, incredibly muddy.
Speaker 5: People could barely walk.
Speaker 1: Let alone bike, let alone drive to try to leave,
Speaker 1: and so they actually close down both the entry and
Speaker 1: the exit for a period of time. Now, people this morning,
Speaker 1: they have been leaving their the roads are reopened. People
Speaker 1: are able to escape now in whatever muddy condition they are,
Speaker 1: but let's take a look at a little bit of
Speaker 1: what was going on at its worst now.
Speaker 13: Roads leading in and out of the festival have been
Speaker 13: shut down since Saturday after heavy rain turned the ground
Speaker 13: into ankle deep mud Offichill Say. The thick muck made
Speaker 13: it virtually impossible for cars, buses and RVs to leave.
Speaker 13: Some people walk for miles to get through the mud
Speaker 13: and get out drowning Matt Update.
Speaker 14: We got three quarters of an insurrain. Travel is impossible,
Speaker 14: and there's about seventy thousand people stranded on a barren lakebed.
Speaker 14: But fortunately burners are bad ass and brought all the
Speaker 14: supplies we need, or most of us. We got people
Speaker 14: who came by bus camped on the edge of the city.
Speaker 14: They're in pop up tens, in at risk of gatin hypothermia.
Speaker 14: But we don't need outside help. We're going to bind together,
Speaker 14: get radically self reliant, draw out the furniture, and keep
Speaker 14: the party going. Tative is to fall into despair, roll
Speaker 14: over and die, and we all have a choice in
Speaker 14: how we're going to handle this. So everyone open up
Speaker 14: your sterling satellite so people can communicate with their families.
Speaker 14: Make an expedition to the edge of the city with
Speaker 14: food and water. Don't fight anybody, because we're all in
Speaker 14: this together. Bury those negative thoughts and gratitude for your
Speaker 14: life because a couple of people didn't make it last night.
Speaker 14: I know that we're all going to clean up this
Speaker 14: mess and get out of here. This is the hand
Speaker 14: we were dealt this here, and together we're going to
Speaker 14: get through it.
Speaker 3: I love this guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of a perfect emblem of like
Speaker 1: the vibe of the people that are there. And I
Speaker 1: mean I had to confess I watched a million videos
Speaker 1: about Burning Man and what it looked like. I mean,
Speaker 1: it looked so disgusting and you're like, all these people
Speaker 1: there and they can't empty the poor to potties and
Speaker 1: it's just a total disaster. Fire festival sort of vibes.
Speaker 1: But the Internet was clearly kind of like obsessed with this.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, a, are why you think that people were
Speaker 1: so interested in like imagining the suffering of the Burning
Speaker 1: Man attendees.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an extraordinary situation, you know. I mean, Burning
Speaker 2: Man is a long place in pop culture. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of controversy around Burning Man, where originally it was
Speaker 2: kind of like hippie festival and argually is I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say taken over, but a huge contention of people who
Speaker 2: are really into.
Speaker 1: It, influencers or like lost and photos of themselves there,
Speaker 1: and a lot of.
Speaker 3: The Silicon Valley billionaires. It became try.
Speaker 2: It's almost like Cochella became one of those things that
Speaker 2: became Instagram trendy became one of those things that became
Speaker 2: an attainable goal rather the counter to counter really to
Speaker 2: like the anti capitalist goal that was originally there.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a big separation between.
Speaker 2: Like real burners and then people who buy their way in,
Speaker 2: so I'll put that aside.
Speaker 3: I have some sympathy. I think it sounds I think
Speaker 3: it sounds cool.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I would experience it, but I mean visually,
Speaker 2: it's just stunning thing.
Speaker 3: And also people.
Speaker 2: Love to see how people, especially Silicon Valley billionaires and others,
Speaker 2: like the idea of them like sitting and suffering in
Speaker 2: this extraordinary environment is just obviously humorous. I saw videos
Speaker 2: of people like Chris Rock and others like being able
Speaker 2: to escape ning Man. Well, poor regular burners were sitting
Speaker 2: there with their stuff. I actually really liked that guy's vibe.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be resilient, We're gonna keep the party going.
Speaker 3: And people I know who are.
Speaker 2: Really into it, who are not these Silicon Valley types
Speaker 2: and others. That's very much the spirit I think that
Speaker 2: they would like to embody. I don't know though, if
Speaker 2: the festival can recover. I was seeing some takes out
Speaker 2: there others. Of course they're gonna keep going, but I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: broader pop culture, like they were like, this really will
Speaker 2: put a damper on the future. And I think at
Speaker 2: the very least, it does highlight something which has always
Speaker 2: been at the core of Burning Man, which is being
Speaker 2: one hundred miles out in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 3: It's not a joke.
Speaker 2: You really do need to be self reliant. You do
Speaker 2: need to prepare and plan for the worst. Crystal You
Speaker 2: and I spend a lot of time outdoors. You know,
Speaker 2: people are very cavalier, putting themselves in situations which you are.
Speaker 2: The margin of safety out there is a real thin
Speaker 2: I've seen people six miles or whatever into the Grand
Speaker 2: Canyon wearing jeans and a single bottle of water and
Speaker 2: it's one hundred I'm like, what are you doing out here,
Speaker 2: like you're asking.
Speaker 3: For it, man. Same in Moab.
Speaker 2: I remember, you know even in Arches National Park they
Speaker 2: even have rangers there are checking people to make sure
Speaker 2: they have enough water, and people are still disregarding it,
Speaker 2: be like no, I'll be fine. Like if you trip
Speaker 2: and fall your four miles out, what are we going
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 3: They got to go save you.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those where it is a reminder
Speaker 2: I think to everybody it's like, look, if you're going
Speaker 2: to partake not even this activity, but any activity out
Speaker 2: there on the margins, like you need to genuinely be
Speaker 2: aware and prepared for a worst case scenario. So I
Speaker 2: think that's also some shot and Foyd's that's a part
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the festival probably will recover, but maybe it shouldn't.
Speaker 1: And the reason I say this is it just feels
Speaker 1: like one of those things where its time has passed.
Speaker 1: Like whatever the original organic idea was that you know
Speaker 1: was a real thing and a community experience, et cetera,
Speaker 1: it's been sort of commodified. It's become more about the
Speaker 1: you know, selfies that influencers post than whatever the original
Speaker 1: conception was. And I think there's a there's a couple
Speaker 1: pieces here. I mean, first of all, I expect that
Speaker 1: the people actually went through this, since their whole goal
Speaker 1: in a sense and going to Burning Man was like
Speaker 1: to have this extraordinary and challenging experience. They had an
Speaker 1: extraordinary and challenging experience. And so I suspect that the
Speaker 1: people who leave there, as much as we're looking at
Speaker 1: the photographs and videos that are like that looks like
Speaker 1: hell on Earth. You could not pay me enough, I
Speaker 1: bet they actually come out feeling like they got something.
Speaker 5: Out of the experience, would be my bet.
Speaker 1: There's also something about the level of privilege that it takes,
Speaker 1: first of all, to be able to you know, take
Speaker 1: time off work, and the expense it's not cheap to do,
Speaker 1: et cetera, etter get the supplies go there. But the
Speaker 1: also level of privilege it takes to feel like you
Speaker 1: need to add suffering into your life, like you need
Speaker 1: to artificially generate suffering and struggle that's meaningful into your life.
Speaker 5: And so I think that's there's an element.
Speaker 1: Of that too. In terms of how people are reacting
Speaker 1: to this. You know, some people are highlighting like the
Speaker 1: types of folks that are at Burning Man at this
Speaker 1: point Katyallas put us up on the screen from the serfs,
Speaker 1: who they describe as he's a former Obama Socia general,
Speaker 1: but he also was the lawyer who successfully, in their words,
Speaker 1: defended Nesslie in their child slavery case. Dressing in what
Speaker 1: they say it can only describe as petocre.
Speaker 5: To build a court room in the middle of.
Speaker 1: The desert perfectly encapsulates the essence of burning man. So listen,
Speaker 1: I haven't been, so I can't speak to what it's
Speaker 1: actually like when you're there, and the vibe and the
Speaker 1: energy and what people get out of it. So I
Speaker 1: don't want to like completely cast it aside. But certainly
Speaker 1: the popular perception is of dudes like this who are wealthy,
Speaker 1: privileged and have done evil things coming there to pose
Speaker 1: like they're these utopian idealists, when really it's just about
Speaker 1: them sort of like play acting some struggle for a.
Speaker 2: Week very likely, And yeah, I mean, there's also never
Speaker 2: underestimate rich people's ability to ruin everything, and that's very
Speaker 2: likely something that happened here. And of course that's why
Speaker 2: the Internet has been captivated as shoden freud, including Ebola conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was, I guess I should say there was
Speaker 1: one person who died, and they're saying it wasn't related
Speaker 1: to the weather. I mean, you got seventy thousand people
Speaker 1: in the desert, like the chance that and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of drugs and whatever going on, So the chance
Speaker 1: is that someone of those seventy thousand people might die
Speaker 1: is not crazy to imagine.
Speaker 5: It's being investigated.
Speaker 1: But it did spark a whole bunch of like there
Speaker 1: was a conspiracy theory that the reason they'd shut it
Speaker 1: down wasn't the mud, it was because there was a
Speaker 1: bola and the spread wildly online as things do, so
Speaker 1: that is another part of why the Internet was fascinating.
Speaker 2: I wish them the vast safe travels home. I hope
Speaker 2: you at least were able to salvage some fun out
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 7: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, let's move on to the next
Speaker 1: block here, because former President Trump making some interesting comments
Speaker 1: about the electric vehicle transition and the push from the
Speaker 1: Biden administration, including largely provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen in part to what Trump had
Speaker 1: to say, and we'll react on the other side.
Speaker 15: What's happening to our auto workers is an absolute disgrace
Speaker 15: and an outrage beyond belief. Auto workers are getting totally
Speaker 15: ripped off by Crooked Joe Biden and also their horrendous leadership,
Speaker 15: because these people are allowing our country to do these
Speaker 15: electric vehicles that very few people want, and it's a mandate,
Speaker 15: So you'll ultimately be forced to drive in a car
Speaker 15: that goes for an hour and then you have to
Speaker 15: have it recharged.
Speaker 7: I hope you don't want to go very far away.
Speaker 15: Biden has imposed the outlandish requirement that sixty seven percent
Speaker 15: of all new vehicles must be electric in less than
Speaker 15: ten years. That means Michigan and places that make cars,
Speaker 15: you can forget about it. You better get your union
Speaker 15: working because you can forget about those cars are all
Speaker 15: going to be made in China, and your bosses are
Speaker 15: leading you right down the tubes. You shouldn't pay your fees.
Speaker 15: They get these big fees from all of their workers,
Speaker 15: and it doesn't matter how bad they are, they'll endorse
Speaker 15: a Democrat even though the Democrats selling you down the tubes.
Speaker 15: Both the UAW bosses and the Big three auto executives
Speaker 15: should be screaming at the top of their lungs. Should
Speaker 15: be ashamed of themselves. And I'm telling you you shouldn't
Speaker 15: pay those dues. You should not pay your dues because
Speaker 15: they're selling you to hell. You're going to be going
Speaker 15: to hell. You're not gonna have any jobs. All those
Speaker 15: cars are going to be made in China. Listen to
Speaker 15: these union guys that get paid a lot of money
Speaker 15: and they get whined and dined in Washington. They know
Speaker 15: that electric cars are no good in terms of our workers.
Speaker 1: So there is a lot to sort through their line,
Speaker 1: many layers. First of all, that anti union rhetoric is
Speaker 1: so like classic standard Republican. I mean, he's delivered with
Speaker 1: like a Trumpian flourish. But the bottom line is like,
Speaker 1: you know, the big union bosses around to get you,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. And he's talking specifically about the
Speaker 1: United United Autoworkers here where they just elected Sean Fain,
Speaker 1: who is you know, really standing up for the rank
Speaker 1: and file, really pushing the auto big three automakers. They
Speaker 1: are imminently threatening a strike up. Talking more about this
Speaker 1: in my monologue again today. You know is asked demanding
Speaker 1: forty six percent salary increases, is demanding that when they
Speaker 1: close a plant in the town that there's actually, you know,
Speaker 1: a job program to keep people employed. That put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. The part about them not pressing
Speaker 1: Biden is also just a lie. The UAW has not
Speaker 1: endorsed Biden specifically because they don't feel he went far
Speaker 1: enough in terms of guaranteeing that the ev transition is
Speaker 1: a just transition, meaning that the wages are commensurate with
Speaker 1: what is in the industry right now, and that those
Speaker 1: jobs remain union jobs. But on the other half of this,
Speaker 1: put the next piece up on the scrape of the
Speaker 1: American Prospect.
Speaker 5: You did some great reporting here.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not that Biden has done nothing, which
Speaker 1: is what Trump did in terms of trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that these are union jobs and they're good, well
Speaker 1: paying jobs.
Speaker 5: Et cetera.
Speaker 1: He used all these typical neoliberal like carrots and sticks
Speaker 1: and subsidies and incentives to try to get the automakers
Speaker 1: to use union labor and keep wages high.
Speaker 5: But they didn't mandate it.
Speaker 1: And so that's the beef with the UAW is they
Speaker 1: don't feel Biden did enough, even though it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: accurate to say that he did absolutely nothing. And then
Speaker 1: the last thing, and I'll throw it to you, Soger
Speaker 1: for your reaction. Let's remember Trump's record with regard to
Speaker 1: automakers and union auto jobs. Lordstown Auto Plant was you know,
Speaker 1: sort of storied, historic, really the bedrock of that community,
Speaker 1: and it's an area that I know well. Trump came in,
Speaker 1: he told these GM workers that he was going to
Speaker 1: save their plant, and of course it was a lie.
Speaker 5: It closed.
Speaker 1: It's now there's you know, there's some like battery factory nearby.
Speaker 1: They tried to get an EV maker and none of
Speaker 1: it has worked out. And so Trump's own record with
Speaker 1: regard to the auto industry was calamitous and catastrophic, and
Speaker 1: he had zero incentives in place to keep the you know,
Speaker 1: the jobs well.
Speaker 5: Paying and union.
Speaker 1: But he goes out there and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: does his Trumpian thing.
Speaker 3: I think there's some interesting parts of this.
Speaker 2: One is I do think Trump is correct about the
Speaker 2: demand for electric vehicles. So, for example, Tesla has out
Speaker 2: selling Toyota in the state of California for twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: That's not just because of subsidies, is because people want
Speaker 2: the cars. Also, people do drive a lot in California.
Speaker 2: There's a reason for that, which is the great cars
Speaker 2: they're going to drive. Now, let's put that aside and
Speaker 2: let's talk about some of where I kind of agree
Speaker 2: with Trump, not on the union front, because I think
Speaker 2: what he's getting, I mean, factually is just not correct,
Speaker 2: especially whenever it comes to Sean Fayne. He's not wrong
Speaker 2: though that a lot of auto worker actual members did
Speaker 2: vote for Trump, and I think some of it stems
Speaker 2: back to those twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Rhetoric culture that goes into it.
Speaker 2: There's a whole other conversation we can have, specifically on
Speaker 2: the EVS, and I've done so many monologues about this.
Speaker 2: What he has gotten at is, like you said, they
Speaker 2: have gone to this mandate about x amount.
Speaker 3: Of vehicles on the road that have to be electric.
Speaker 2: Without planning or doing any of the stuff that you
Speaker 2: actually have to do in order to achieve.
Speaker 3: That very lofty goal.
Speaker 5: There's no mandate.
Speaker 2: So he's talking about the EPA emissions mandate around.
Speaker 5: Well, whatever, there's no there's no mandate that.
Speaker 3: New cars sold five.
Speaker 1: The thing that he said about like there's a mandate
Speaker 1: that it has to be sixty seven per that's not true. Well,
Speaker 1: Biden is using these incentives that's his goal is to
Speaker 1: get to that point. But that's just not accurate that
Speaker 1: it's like we will.
Speaker 2: Have this unper ball cars. Is that new cars have
Speaker 2: to meet ex emissions. I mean the same way California
Speaker 2: is doing it. They're doing the same thing with the
Speaker 2: EPA with their own state Environmental Agency requirement around new
Speaker 2: cars being sold. Regardless, the point is that if you
Speaker 2: do want to get to that, you need a massive
Speaker 2: explosion in charging infrastructure. You need a massive explosion in
Speaker 2: industrial capacity to build battery plants.
Speaker 3: He's not wrong.
Speaker 2: The vast majority I've done tons of monologues though, is
Speaker 2: the vast majority of the battery.
Speaker 3: Supply chain is in China.
Speaker 2: It's a huge problem for Elon Musk and for Tesla,
Speaker 2: where not only the major battery supplier, but huge parts
Speaker 2: of their own supply chain for the basic requirements of
Speaker 2: the car themselves are not made here in the United States.
Speaker 2: So we need actual plants in order to get that done.
Speaker 2: I support the UAW trying to push that. I do not, though,
Speaker 2: and I'm not a fan of the requirement or at
Speaker 2: the very least the EPA emission standards that require this,
Speaker 2: because I think that electric vehicles can be subsidized and
Speaker 2: can be created to be a genual competitor. But I
Speaker 2: don't like the idea of forcing people to buy electric cars.
Speaker 5: I don't think anybody.
Speaker 2: Environment where you are directly making it so that with
Speaker 2: the emission standards that you need to be able to
Speaker 2: have a situation where look, there's a lot of scenarios
Speaker 2: where people are going to need a gas power vehicle
Speaker 2: and or want or prefer a gas power vehicle. Not
Speaker 2: only strategically as he's talking about with our own oil reserves,
Speaker 2: but you know, for rural life and for people who
Speaker 2: drive like hundreds of miles like that, it's really not
Speaker 2: feasible with the current infrastructure. Not to mention the amount
Speaker 2: of power that we're going to need, actual nuclear power,
Speaker 2: much cleaner and better power available. This would require, I mean,
Speaker 2: a massive change in the way that Americans live their
Speaker 2: lives in the next decade, and that's just not going
Speaker 2: to happen with the current incentives that.
Speaker 3: We have here.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: So, there's two sides of what Biden is doing. On
Speaker 1: the consumer side, there are rebates in place to try
Speaker 1: to make electric vehicles more affordable, to make it more
Speaker 1: to make it more appealing for consumers. They're not being
Speaker 1: forced but to try to bring the cost down so
Speaker 1: the electric vehicles.
Speaker 5: Are more appealing.
Speaker 1: On the automaker side, there's a bunch of incentives in
Speaker 1: place for them to shift to evs. By the way,
Speaker 1: and we talked about this before with regard to California,
Speaker 1: the big three automakers already before Biden passed Inflation Reduction
Speaker 1: Act or any of that, they already saw the future
Speaker 1: as EV's and they were already moving in this direction.
Speaker 1: So the Inflation Reduction Act provides additional tax I mean,
Speaker 1: this is industrial policy, right, They've decided this important play
Speaker 1: for the future. By the way, China is all in
Speaker 1: on this market. I mean they have aggressively been funding
Speaker 1: their own EV market because they see it also as
Speaker 1: the future and they want to get a job. And
Speaker 1: they've you know, done way more than we have in
Speaker 1: terms of both the EV technology and the battery technology specifically,
Speaker 1: so we are behind. So the other thing than Inflationial
Speaker 1: Reduction Act does is provides incentives for the automakers in
Speaker 1: this direction and includes incentives to try to make those
Speaker 1: jobs good, well.
Speaker 5: Paying union jobs.
Speaker 1: Now, I personally think they should have gone further in
Speaker 1: terms of requiring them to be union jobs. So you know,
Speaker 1: all the Tesla people would have been very upset about
Speaker 1: that because Tesla is not union. Tesla's not union with
Speaker 1: the CURRU, so it would have been a big issue
Speaker 1: for them, even though again I agree with Sean Faine
Speaker 1: that they should have done that. So I just think
Speaker 1: what he's trying to do here is he's trying to
Speaker 1: make electric vehicles like a partisan.
Speaker 5: I don't want that to happen, and I don't want
Speaker 5: it either.
Speaker 1: And the way that most consumers view this is not
Speaker 1: through a partisan valance. They're just looking at like what's
Speaker 1: the cost of Guess how much does an EV cost?
Speaker 1: What's the charging infrastructure? And by the way, looks the
Speaker 1: charging infrastructure needs to be way better than it is now.
Speaker 1: There is some money for that within the Inflation Production Act,
Speaker 1: it's probably not sufficient. That is an important component, it's
Speaker 1: probably the most important component of making this stant is
Speaker 1: making this realistic for ordinary people. But most people are
Speaker 1: just like looking at the math and seeing if this
Speaker 1: works out for them, and it's really not a partson thing.
Speaker 1: And I the one thing I will credit Elon Musk
Speaker 1: for who no I'm not a big fan, is that
Speaker 1: he has by reading as right wing, he has made
Speaker 1: evs more acceptable for Republicans, conservatives, independence than back when
Speaker 1: it was seen in sort of like the preus lens.
Speaker 3: There's two geniuses of Tesla.
Speaker 2: Tesla was a decade ahead of establishing the actual electric
Speaker 2: vehicle at the very basic consumer level. They brought the
Speaker 2: Model three online and made it one of the best
Speaker 2: selling cars currently in the United States.
Speaker 3: That's number one. Number two is the charging infrastructure.
Speaker 2: They have over twelve thousand Tesla chargers that are all
Speaker 2: across the nation, which vastly outstrips every single other nation.
Speaker 2: In fact, I believe that the future value of Tesla
Speaker 2: will not be the car. It will be effectively Tesla
Speaker 2: as a physical platform. Think of it almost like a
Speaker 2: tech platform where they're retrofitting and have created deals with
Speaker 2: Forward and with multiple other.
Speaker 5: And they just did to deal with Ford on starting amer.
Speaker 2: So they are going to create a way for Ford
Speaker 2: vehicles and all these other electric vehicles to be able
Speaker 2: to use the existing Tesla, which I believe that's the
Speaker 2: biggest leap forward in electric technology and infrastructure has been
Speaker 2: by The thing is, though, and this is where This
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with elon or any of that.
Speaker 2: Somebody's got to pay for the power. I mean, right now,
Speaker 2: when you charge up a car, it's actually not that
Speaker 2: much money. But if we're going to move to a
Speaker 2: place where two thirds of vehicles are using that, not
Speaker 2: gas stations, and you're going to have to retrofit all
Speaker 2: this existing infrastructure, we are going to need a ton
Speaker 2: more power actual you know, physical electricity. And that is
Speaker 2: where things get really complicated and where I have not
Speaker 2: yet seen a single real serious effort you know by
Speaker 2: the Biden administration or any of that they are going
Speaker 2: all in on solar and on when they're nuclear recily
Speaker 2: or Commission is not doing any serious effort. And it's
Speaker 2: not just them, And there's a Congress that's involved here too.
Speaker 2: So I don't disagree with you. I mean I think
Speaker 2: it's a bad place. I hope that electric vehicle does
Speaker 2: not become partisan, because I think they're awesome cars. I
Speaker 2: do think that there very much can be the future,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of stuff that has to line
Speaker 2: up behind it. The current status quo is really not
Speaker 2: one where we want to end up. I mean, currently
Speaker 2: gas power vehicles, brand new electric, but brand new gas power.
Speaker 3: Vehicles are still quite expensive.
Speaker 2: They're like fifty fifty forty five thousand dollars, I believe
Speaker 2: is the average price.
Speaker 3: On top of that, you got four dollars a gallon
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: As I said, though, I think that the gas I
Speaker 2: think gas powered vehicles will always have a place in
Speaker 2: American life, largely because of people who live in more
Speaker 2: rural communities. Because of this, the ability for us to
Speaker 2: actually to take it out of our ground and not
Speaker 2: have to rely on foreign countries if we want to
Speaker 2: in order to achieve that. That said, you know, if
Speaker 2: you want to create a real mix, the current path
Speaker 2: forward isn't a terrible one where a lot of people
Speaker 2: are just buying Teslas because they're cool with cars or
Speaker 2: Ford Electric you know, Ford must yeah, or any of those,
Speaker 2: And that's kind of where you want to keep it.
Speaker 2: You want to keep it at the consumer level where
Speaker 2: people are choosing them. I think it's like ten percent
Speaker 2: or so or whatever of the market right now, because
Speaker 2: there is either a second car, it's largely like a
Speaker 2: middle class, upper middle class thing right now. But as
Speaker 2: the Model three, especially right now, Tesla is massively cutting
Speaker 2: its prices I'm very interested to see what the uptake
Speaker 2: is on there. I mean when you can buy a
Speaker 2: brand new Tesla for like thirty three thousand dollars or something,
Speaker 2: or even a used one for twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: with not that much mileage on it, that changes the
Speaker 2: whole game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for how this is going to work, that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean I have a FORTYV I love it. It
Speaker 1: gets more than three hundred miles range. It's been very
Speaker 1: I would not at this point, given the charging infrastructure,
Speaker 1: I would not want that to.
Speaker 5: Be my only car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the problem it is for you know, if
Speaker 1: we long road trips with the kids, like, that's a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: And so those are the sorts of like pragmatic considerations
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are making. It's like weighing
Speaker 1: the costs. What's gas, what's the charging infrastructure?
Speaker 7: Look like?
Speaker 5: What am I going to use this for? Et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I charge at my house right, So for me,
Speaker 1: it's very easy. I almost never charge it the chargers whatever.
Speaker 1: I just don't go further than what I can go.
Speaker 3: That's a I mean, look at Bernie Man.
Speaker 2: I mean, one thing is like you don't want to
Speaker 2: be one hundred percent reliant on You're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to drive this Tesla charging station out in
Speaker 2: the middle of the desert.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're like, that works out. It's not working.
Speaker 2: Ninety five percent of the time. It will but five
Speaker 2: percent of the time and you got no cell service.
Speaker 2: What the hell are you going to do?
Speaker 5: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure, so deal with gas too.
Speaker 5: Those are the practical boers.
Speaker 1: On the political front, let me say I think Trump
Speaker 1: is he has He also often has good instincts, even
Speaker 1: when I hate what he's saying, which part of most
Speaker 1: of what he said, I hate what he said. But
Speaker 1: I think on the union anti union part, I think
Speaker 1: he's really off base if we just look at the
Speaker 1: numbers in terms of how the public feels about unions.
Speaker 1: If you look at the at the fact that the
Speaker 1: UAW is just about to have this giant fight with
Speaker 1: the automakers, so to be like the bosses, you know,
Speaker 1: the union bosses are selling you out. I just don't
Speaker 1: think that that comports with reality public sentiment in America broadly,
Speaker 1: or even within the Republican base at this point. So
Speaker 1: that's one thing I think he probably is right in
Speaker 1: sensing that there is an increasing partisan valance to EV's
Speaker 1: and that there is obviously a lot of skepticism within
Speaker 1: the Republican base about doing anything with regard to climate change,
Speaker 1: and so I think, you know, on the politics of it,
Speaker 1: on that piece, I suspect he's probably kind of prescient here,
Speaker 1: and you know, I hate that that's the case, but
Speaker 1: I think it's probably true.
Speaker 2: I think that the F one fifty in particular was
Speaker 2: such a massive mistake here because they tried to over
Speaker 2: promise to their core consumer.
Speaker 3: A lot of Republicans drive Ford.
Speaker 2: F one fifties and in rural areas, and they were like, no,
Speaker 2: this is going to be able to totally replace it,
Speaker 2: and the thing whenever you got real cargo has got
Speaker 2: like one hundred mile range. I think that EV proponents,
Speaker 2: which I am, really need to be realistic about use
Speaker 2: case of infrastructure, about the pain points about all of that,
Speaker 2: and then can't be just telling folks who are actual farmers, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can totally replace your for fifty.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If look, if you drive truck for fun, go for it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's probably a hell of a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: If it's your second car or something like that. But
Speaker 2: that's not the privilege you know that most people have,
Speaker 2: and it's not even the primary reason that people are
Speaker 2: buying trucks, or at least the use case there for
Speaker 2: what they exist. I just think that people need to
Speaker 2: stay within the Roman reality here and not over promise
Speaker 2: and then under delivered. They have to actually over deliver,
Speaker 2: which is what a lot of Tesla cars have been
Speaker 2: able to do for their consumers. Part of the reason
Speaker 2: why they have such a high amount of brand recognition
Speaker 2: people who desire the cars, because it's not just that
Speaker 2: that they want it. They have people who have it,
Speaker 2: they know people who love it and all that, and
Speaker 2: it is never really under delivered in terms of what
Speaker 2: they've promised whenever it at least comes to range and
Speaker 2: all that. I know there's some lawsuits, but that's mostly
Speaker 2: from years ago. The brand new cars. They pretty much
Speaker 2: have not seen any of those same problems. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 2: I think it was an interesting discussion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's move on.
Speaker 7: Bill Maher.
Speaker 3: Bill Maher, you might have seen him.
Speaker 2: He's on the podcast circuit right now promoting Club Random.
Speaker 2: He had an interesting moment on his podcast with Jim
Speaker 2: Again where he talked about the writer's strike, and it
Speaker 2: seems that Bill is getting a little bit cranky about
Speaker 2: not being able to do a show.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 10: The strike is a perfect example. Those guys would never
Speaker 10: go back. This strike could go on till the twenty
Speaker 10: fourth century. They would stay out. There is I feel
Speaker 10: for my writers. I love my writers. I'm one of
Speaker 10: my writers. But there's a big other side to it,
Speaker 10: and a lot of people are being hurt besides them,
Speaker 10: a lot of people who don't make as much money
Speaker 10: as them. In this bipartisan world we have where you're
Speaker 10: just in one camp or the other. There's no in between.
Speaker 10: You're either for the strike, like they're fucking Shay Guavera
Speaker 10: out there, you know, like this is Caesar Chavez, let
Speaker 10: us picking strike, or you're with Trump. You know, like
Speaker 10: there's no different there's only two camps. And it's much
Speaker 10: more complicated than that it is.
Speaker 11: But I do feel like there is a lot of
Speaker 11: the points, a lot of the grievances I kind of
Speaker 11: agree with.
Speaker 10: I do understand that they're getting screwed a bit by
Speaker 10: the streamers.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I.
Speaker 11: Mean, but it's a change, and you either, you know,
Speaker 11: it's like anything that is you know, I believe in
Speaker 11: free market, but I also believe in trust and then
Speaker 11: verify right, meaning you know you don't trust, you know,
Speaker 11: like the reason I mean Zaslov made four hundred million
Speaker 11: dollars and I think that they're they're looking for eighty
Speaker 11: million for you know. It's like it's like they're gonna,
Speaker 11: you know, you leave a kid in front of a
Speaker 11: bowl of marshmallows. They're going to eat the marshmallows. It's
Speaker 11: not like some grand thing. It's well, I don't know
Speaker 11: what you're saying. They're only asking for eighty million dollars. Well,
Speaker 11: I'm asking for a lot of things. They're asking for
Speaker 11: a lot of things like kookie.
Speaker 10: Like what what I find objectionable about the philosophy of
Speaker 10: the strike. It seems to be they have really morphed
Speaker 10: a long way from two thousand and seven strike, where
Speaker 10: they kind of believe that you're owed a living as
Speaker 10: a writer and you're not. This is show business. This
Speaker 10: is a make or miss league and not everybody.
Speaker 11: You don't think that like they should that streamers should
Speaker 11: reveal numbers so that they can oh maybe.
Speaker 3: Sure, wow, you are you?
Speaker 2: They kind of believe you're owed a living as a
Speaker 2: writer and you're not imagine being one of the writers
Speaker 2: on his own show. How would you feel about that
Speaker 2: whenever you're on strike? I don't really understand. But at
Speaker 2: a broader level, and look, you can agree or disagree
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 3: The thing is that gets me is.
Speaker 2: Just the privileged position of being obviously at the near
Speaker 2: tail end of your career, of having made decades of
Speaker 2: success and tons of money in Hollywood and on HBO,
Speaker 2: and then kind of lecturing these folks, even those who
Speaker 2: are coming up up, who are trying to just have
Speaker 2: the even just a basic shot, and then even those
Speaker 2: who want extraordinary success see so much of what's going
Speaker 2: on with the writer strike as their ability in order
Speaker 2: to attain that without having their literal likeness stripped away
Speaker 2: by AI, without having the ability to get the residual
Speaker 2: checks and all these other things that some of these
Speaker 2: people have been banking on. Frankly, they're not even going
Speaker 2: to be making that, you know, They're really fighting more
Speaker 2: for different protections of which I think are correct. Specifically
Speaker 2: whenever it comes to AI. That's where I was like,
Speaker 2: what kookie thing does he think that they're asking for?
Speaker 5: I know I wanted a little bit.
Speaker 1: You are like elaborate on what part of just like
Speaker 1: wanting to be able to live and earn, you know,
Speaker 1: earn a.
Speaker 5: Decent wage is kooky.
Speaker 1: Now listen, in fairness of Bill Maher, my understanding is
Speaker 1: that his people are paid well, that they can live,
Speaker 1: that they you know, that he does believe they are
Speaker 1: owed a living as a writer, at least as a
Speaker 1: writer for his show. So I don't think he's treating
Speaker 1: you know, in my limited experience there, I don't think
Speaker 1: he's treating his people shabbily at all, Which makes this
Speaker 1: commentary even more a little more dissonant, because it's like, look,
Speaker 1: they see the fact that the industry has changed a lot, right,
Speaker 1: and they see what's coming down the pike here in
Speaker 1: terms of using AI, and this is what all this
Speaker 1: This is one of the big sticking points with the
Speaker 1: writers strikes. Specifically, the studios want to be able to
Speaker 1: use AI, like, for example, to generate first drafts of scripts,
Speaker 1: and then writers are brought in after the fact to
Speaker 1: just polish the scripts that the robots wrote. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't personally think the tech is even at the place
Speaker 1: where it could feasibly do that at this point. But
Speaker 1: it's not crazy to imagine that that is coming very
Speaker 1: soon before whenever will be the next chance for them
Speaker 1: to renegotiate their contract. And so they clearly see these
Speaker 1: stakes as existential. That's why, you know, this has not
Speaker 1: been easy for these writers. They've been out of work
Speaker 1: for a long time. The studios said they're willing to
Speaker 1: make them homeless, and some of them are like living
Speaker 1: that reality. They are losing their apartments, they're losing their homes.
Speaker 1: They this is very, very real for them. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing it casually. The other part part of the
Speaker 1: framing that I really object to is he says at
Speaker 1: the beginning, I feel for my writers, but there's a
Speaker 1: big other side where other people are getting hurt, who
Speaker 1: you know, make less money that they do something like that.
Speaker 1: It's like pinning the whole problem on the writers, as
Speaker 1: if the studios don't share any blames who for trying
Speaker 1: to screw them over and really have it, you know,
Speaker 1: given them any sort of a deal that's feasible for
Speaker 1: them whatsoever. So I always that framing, to me, is
Speaker 1: so so disingenuous and so inaccurate that it's always the
Speaker 1: fault of the workers who are trying to demand a
Speaker 1: little bit better and demand like a fair piece of
Speaker 1: this gigantic part of the economy, and they're the ones
Speaker 1: that are blamed versus the studio executives who are rolling in,
Speaker 1: you know, have plenty lots of money and you know,
Speaker 1: did great during the pandemic and whatever. Somehow it's never
Speaker 1: their fault for screwing.
Speaker 3: And they're the ones who, like, you know, have all
Speaker 3: the money.
Speaker 2: And I just don't know Also at point which point
Speaker 2: this is going to fold, because the problem is is
Speaker 2: that even public attention right now is going to be
Speaker 2: so divided. I mean, think about it. All massed attention
Speaker 2: in the United States is about to go towards football,
Speaker 2: but it's like it's football season. It's one of those
Speaker 2: which is going to dominate. We are here on a
Speaker 2: platform like YouTube where user generated content is going to continue,
Speaker 2: but also prestige content. I'm doing my whole monologue about
Speaker 2: this about prestige content, about why original scripts and all
Speaker 2: that are so important. That's part of the reason why
Speaker 2: I'm so sympathetic to so many of these demands is
Speaker 2: because I'm like, this is really the you know, the
Speaker 2: engine of creativity. If we go to an AI generated world.
Speaker 2: We all know it's going to be crap. AI only
Speaker 2: generates off of other AI. It doesn't have at least yet,
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't have its own physical creativity. And
Speaker 2: so look, I think that that what mar fundamentally is,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I think he just misunderstands because
Speaker 2: even the writers who are on strike, these are professional writers.
Speaker 3: It's like they're not owed a living.
Speaker 2: Like sure, anybody who's writing a specscript and is like,
Speaker 2: it's my dream to become a writer, of course, but
Speaker 2: these are actual professionals who are in the business, who
Speaker 2: are making a living or at least trying to make
Speaker 2: a living by doing so that's a whole other, you know,
Speaker 2: different consideration. So anyway, I think the whole thing was
Speaker 2: pretty out of touch for Bill Maher.
Speaker 5: All right, sagary looking at it.
Speaker 2: Well, like many people, the ideas behind the fourth Turning
Speaker 2: of I Kneel how have intrigued me now for a
Speaker 2: long time. There's oceans of discussion out there about how
Speaker 2: house thesis pertains to politics where the ruling regime loses legitimacy,
Speaker 2: the population reaches a crisis point in politics, and often
Speaker 2: either a civil war or World War is required to
Speaker 2: end the cycle.
Speaker 3: What people often miss.
Speaker 2: In the analysis of the fourth turning are his pressient
Speaker 2: and yet equally important discussions of how each turning is
Speaker 2: reflected in pop culture and how what art is popular
Speaker 2: in each turn relates to the larger trends.
Speaker 3: I couldn't help thinking about that. Over the Labor Day weekend, the.
Speaker 2: Official numbers of the summer box office season have come out,
Speaker 2: showing a stunning reversal of more than a decade of
Speaker 2: American pop culture and Hollywood successful formulas. The two major
Speaker 2: hits of the summer blockbuster season are now officially Barbie
Speaker 2: and Oppenheimer, beating out traditional franchise hits like The Latest
Speaker 2: Mission Impossible and the latest installment of the Indiana Jones franchise.
Speaker 2: But what is really stunning is to consider Barbie and
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer in broader context. Barbie has now crossed the coveted
Speaker 2: one billion dollar worldwide box office threshold, and Christopher Nolans
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer is now one of the highest grossing R rated
Speaker 2: films of all time. Consider Barbie, for example, against Guardians
Speaker 2: of the Galaxy three, which is the end of a
Speaker 2: particular franchise and one of the only good Marvel movies
Speaker 2: to actually come out in years, it grows only eight
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars globally at the box office. That's not
Speaker 2: to even mention the pathetic performance so far of DC
Speaker 2: comics movies like Flash and Blue Beetle, which are a
Speaker 2: decade too late to the craze and hopefully will die
Speaker 2: or at least be reborn in a more dignified fashion.
Speaker 2: The sudden reversal with films like Barbie Oppenheimer and Sound
Speaker 2: of Freedom crushing major franchise films at the box office
Speaker 2: is a massive demarcation point in American culture, and it
Speaker 2: returns us possibly to the best of Hollywood. Great scripts,
Speaker 2: great casts, original screenplays, big dollars at the box office.
Speaker 2: The real test comes in the next year or so.
Speaker 2: Which era are we going to live in? We get
Speaker 2: to choose. Consider some of the other films that are
Speaker 2: coming out in the next year or so. Ridley Scott
Speaker 2: with Joaquin Phoenix for what is sure to be a
Speaker 2: stunning Napoleon biopic, or the character actor Adam Driver starring
Speaker 2: alongside Penelope Cruz in Ferrari, or Leo and Scorsese coming
Speaker 2: to us once again with Killers of the Flower Moon
Speaker 2: Or which is already one of the best nonfiction books
Speaker 2: to come out in the last decade. And don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong, there are plenty of franchise films that will
Speaker 2: still come out.
Speaker 3: Saw ten, which.
Speaker 2: We needed, of course, a new Hungry Games movie, Nu
Speaker 2: Wonka movie, and Aquaman two The Marvels which looks like
Speaker 2: one of the worst movies ever and only one that
Speaker 2: I'm actually excited for doone too. If only the best,
Speaker 2: though of those, survive, and great original screenplays with stars
Speaker 2: and great directors do thrive alongside them, it will be
Speaker 2: a sound message to Hollywood, no more recycled crap. We
Speaker 2: demand originality. More so, it is important to connect our
Speaker 2: pop culture again to the fourth turning in the context
Speaker 2: of geopolitics. The economics of Marvel movies didn't make as
Speaker 2: much sense just for American box offices. It was because
Speaker 2: they occurred at the height of Obama era, globalization and
Speaker 2: the coddling of China. Marvel movies found incredible success in
Speaker 2: emerging box offices, and that led to the watering down
Speaker 2: of scripts that were relevant across all cultures, as opposed
Speaker 2: to references that people could truly understand at home. In
Speaker 2: the era though of great power competition, the Chinese box
Speaker 2: office dream is basically dead. Even Marvel movies that were
Speaker 2: targeted to China like Shangxi and The Rings, were banned
Speaker 2: for political purposes, and Hollywood has found itself increasing demands
Speaker 2: for censorship which even they can't bow to. This of
Speaker 2: course forces their hand. If they can't have access to
Speaker 2: that market, they got to change their approach, and that
Speaker 2: change would work far better if you actually like good movies.
Speaker 2: The great stagnation that we saw in our economy since
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight has of course affected us all
Speaker 2: in much much more important ways like access to housing, jobs, inflation, wages,
Speaker 2: wealth inequality. But the way in which we both entertain
Speaker 2: ourselves and that we demand of our entertainment.
Speaker 3: Says also a lot about us.
Speaker 2: The stagnation of Hollywood led to an explosion of streaming
Speaker 2: content for niche individual audiences. This was downstream of the Internet,
Speaker 2: which of course also coincided and pushed along politics of division. Now,
Speaker 2: I am the firm belief a national identity is a
Speaker 2: result of a major economic and good conditions and uniting beliefs.
Speaker 2: Hollywood at its best, in its golden age, it served
Speaker 2: as a vehicle for everyone to find a piece of
Speaker 2: themselves in silver screen and to experience collective moments together.
Speaker 2: And perhaps one good result of all of the chaos
Speaker 2: over the last fifteen years is the birth of a
Speaker 2: new era reclaiming that legacy, which could lead to better
Speaker 2: times far ahead. So interesting, Crystal, I'm curious what you
Speaker 2: make of it. I know you didn't like Barbie, but and.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear my reaction to Sager's model,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: Crystal, what do you take a look at?
Speaker 1: Well, guys, Labor Day is back for the first time
Speaker 1: in modern history. Rather than some nostalgic anachronism of a
Speaker 1: bygone era when labor actually commanded some real respect on
Speaker 1: our economic system, Labor Day twenty twenty three came with
Speaker 1: a little bit of bite and a whole lot of promise.
Speaker 1: This new labor energy is every bit as exciting as
Speaker 1: our sclerotic political system is depressing. Rising strike and organizing action,
Speaker 1: combined with some genuinely significant policy changes, has made this
Speaker 1: a hot labor summer to remember. And I am one
Speaker 1: hundred percent here for it. And into this mixed steps
Speaker 1: autoworkers who could in mere weeks launch a groundbreaking, potentially
Speaker 1: transformational strike. We may well look back at this moment
Speaker 1: and this Labor Day as a turning point from the
Speaker 1: bottoming out of worker power during the neoliberal era.
Speaker 5: So first let's take a look at the big picture.
Speaker 1: Strike activity is way up in twenty twenty three after
Speaker 1: a pandemic era lull. Actors and writers, of course, are
Speaker 1: on strike ups. Workers authorized a strike but instead secured
Speaker 1: a very strong deal for themselves, and now auto workers
Speaker 1: are weeks away from a possible strike of all the
Speaker 1: Big three if the automakers do not come to the
Speaker 1: table with a serious offer and fast. What's transformational about
Speaker 1: all of these actions is that at their core, they're
Speaker 1: actually about workers trying to claim a fair deal in
Speaker 1: a rapidly evolving economy focused on technology. Actors don't want
Speaker 1: to be harvested for AI and screwed by streaming. Writers
Speaker 1: don't want to be an assistant to chat GPT. Auto
Speaker 1: workers are demanding a just ev transition that will not
Speaker 1: leave them behind and shift yet another industry into a
Speaker 1: worker's race to the bottom. But that's not even close
Speaker 1: to all New York Times compiled a remarkable visual chart
Speaker 1: showing the number of workers who've gone out on strike
Speaker 1: this year as compared to previous years. Now you can
Speaker 1: see the numbers for this year. If autoworkers hit the
Speaker 1: picket lines will look more like the seventies and eighties
Speaker 1: when union density was far higher than it looks like
Speaker 1: the early two thousands.
Speaker 5: Now. That makes these numbers even more extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Looking at the chart, though, you really come to realize
Speaker 1: how this moment actually kicked off. With the Red state
Speaker 1: teacher strike waves of twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, those
Speaker 1: movements signified workers of all political persuasions were ready to
Speaker 1: fight back in a big way. But what's happening now
Speaker 1: is maybe even more significant because of its breadth. Cornell
Speaker 1: University School of Industrial and Labor Relations has tracked two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty one work stoppages just this year. One
Speaker 1: of the stories that the new labor energy is about
Speaker 1: smaller shops, places like individual Starbucks stores organizing. So it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense that a wave of small
Speaker 1: scale action would be happening underneath the surface of the
Speaker 1: big headline stories like ups and auto workers. Now there's
Speaker 1: a lot of indications too, that the moment is particularly ripe.
Speaker 1: The public, having soured on the free market radicalism of
Speaker 1: the past several decades, is increasingly supportive of unions and
Speaker 1: eager for them to have more power. After heading a
Speaker 1: trough in two thousand and nine, the number of Americans
Speaker 1: yearning for union power has steadily increased.
Speaker 5: Through Occupy Wall.
Speaker 1: Street, into burning campaigns and COVID, more and more people
Speaker 1: have realize that part of what ails the American working
Speaker 1: class is a lack of organized power and a political
Speaker 1: class which has often joined together to block their aspirations. Today,
Speaker 1: a higher number of Americans forty three percent say union
Speaker 1: should have more power than at any time since that
Speaker 1: question was first asked, Only twenty six percent say union
Speaker 1: should have less power. You go back to two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, those two numbers were completely flipped.
Speaker 5: In low and behold.
Speaker 1: Politicians are actually somewhat responding to this new reality. Just
Speaker 1: take a look at Joe Biden's National Labor Relations Board,
Speaker 1: which is perhaps the absolute best thing about his administration
Speaker 1: and is truly significant. They issued key rulings which enabled
Speaker 1: the Starbucks and other graster's union drives. Recently, they've issued
Speaker 1: a spree of highly based rulings which could completely transform
Speaker 1: a union landscape. As Biden would say, not a joke.
Speaker 1: The Biden Department of Labor is pushing to up the
Speaker 1: overtime thresholds so that more workers will qualify for overtime pay,
Speaker 1: significantly increasing the earnings of millions. The National Labor Relations
Speaker 1: Board also just strengthened protections for so long low work actions,
Speaker 1: encouraging more workers to engage in protests that could prompt
Speaker 1: future group actions. But in what is a true labor earthquake,
Speaker 1: they just issued a ruling which would require employers to
Speaker 1: recognize unions and start bargaining if that boss is caught
Speaker 1: union busting. Now, keep in mind, union busting labor violations
Speaker 1: are so common and so completely routine, that this ruling
Speaker 1: alone could de facto make so called card check the
Speaker 1: law of the land. In other words, if a majority
Speaker 1: of workers signed cards indicating they want a union, and
Speaker 1: bosses then try to union busts, which they always do,
Speaker 1: the elections canceled and the union is recognized. At the
Speaker 1: very least, it will powerfully dissuade the commonplace attacks on
Speaker 1: unions which have run rampant because there has been zero accountability.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say Republicans have gotten a memo,
Speaker 1: but outside of some vaguely pro labor rhetoric, it's just
Speaker 1: not the case right now. In fact, Congressional Republicans are
Speaker 1: working hand in glove with the Chamber of Commerce to
Speaker 1: hamstring the operation of the National Labor Relations Board, So
Speaker 1: it can't do any more good things for working people
Speaker 1: throughout the remainder of this Biden term. But I guess
Speaker 1: he can say at least that union busting is no
Speaker 1: longer the animating caused celeb in the Republican Party.
Speaker 5: That it was a decade ago.
Speaker 1: When you think about Scott Walker running the Koch Brothers
Speaker 1: playbook to decimate unions in one of their historic strongholds
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin, or when you think about Chris Christy, who
Speaker 1: rose to fame in conservative stardom by screaming at teachers
Speaker 1: and beefing with unions. Now, I know, I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: temper my expectations here. After all, the economy could be turning,
Speaker 1: making things a lot more difficult for workers. Union density
Speaker 1: still declined last year, in spite of a whole lot
Speaker 1: of new energy and despite real wins the overall landscape
Speaker 1: is still tilted radically against workers. But I can't help
Speaker 1: but feel on this Labor Day twenty twenty three, that
Speaker 1: a dam has indeed broken, that we have now reached
Speaker 1: the depths, and perhaps the story from here will be
Speaker 1: one of workers actually scoring some wins in the class
Speaker 1: war that is always being waged against them.
Speaker 5: So for everyone out.
Speaker 1: There with the courage to fight for a better deal,
Speaker 1: Happy Labor Day. Than Nation is with you, and I
Speaker 1: do think we're at a turning point.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints.
Speaker 1: Dot com writer and activist Freddy Divor is out with
Speaker 1: a new book.
Speaker 5: Let's go and put it up on the screen. Excited
Speaker 5: dig in this one.
Speaker 1: The headline is how Elites eight the social justice Movement.
Speaker 1: It is available today and Freddy joins us now to discuss.
Speaker 1: Great to see you, my friend, Thanks for having me on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, what inspired the book.
Speaker 12: I just had a feeling in sort of early twenty
Speaker 12: twenty two, So I sold the book in May of
Speaker 12: twenty twenty two. I just feeling that I was just
Speaker 12: going crazy because a couple of years earlier, everyone was
Speaker 12: talking about revolution. Every day you read a new, overheated
Speaker 12: piece about how we had to sort of shake society
Speaker 12: by its foundations, that we would not settle for reform,
Speaker 12: that everything had to be torn up by the roots.
Speaker 12: And then in a couple of years later, it just
Speaker 12: felt like everyone had kind of decided to sideline that,
Speaker 12: ignore it, and pretend like it didn't happen because they
Speaker 12: were embarrassed by the fact that nothing changed.
Speaker 7: I think that the events of twenty twenty.
Speaker 12: Indicated very deep and very real problems with our country,
Speaker 12: and that those problems need to be met effectively, and
Speaker 12: that didn't happen in twenty twenty. And if you take
Speaker 12: those problems seriously, you have to ask, how can we
Speaker 12: do this better in the future.
Speaker 7: And that's what the book is all about.
Speaker 3: Freddie.
Speaker 2: One of the things that leaps out, you know, you
Speaker 2: mentioned the Washington Post review had it up in front
Speaker 2: of me, and it's one of those where they kind
Speaker 2: of take issue. They're like, well, Freddie Debor ostensibly says
Speaker 2: the left was co opted here by elite movements, that
Speaker 2: they were defeated in their aims. And as you said,
Speaker 2: now too embarrassed to talk about like specific instances that
Speaker 2: you kind of go into in the book about where
Speaker 2: you think that was the most prevalent.
Speaker 12: Well, I can tell you one of the things that
Speaker 12: invited just rage very early in the process. So at
Speaker 12: some point the publishing company unleash the table of contents
Speaker 12: onto the world before the book itself was available. And
Speaker 12: one of the chapters is titled BPMCLM, which means back,
Speaker 12: black professional Lives Matter, but a black professional managerial class.
Speaker 7: Lives matter, Excuse me.
Speaker 12: And the argument is I think both completely just sort
Speaker 12: of undeniable, but also very controversial, which is that the
Speaker 12: activists who made up Black Lives Matter are not like
Speaker 12: the median black American. They're not even like the median
Speaker 12: black Democrat. Now, I want to say very quickly that
Speaker 12: that's okay.
Speaker 7: It's not their.
Speaker 12: Job to be avatars of media and black experience. Their
Speaker 12: job is just to advocate for what they think is right.
Speaker 12: The problem is that the media just sort of took
Speaker 12: whatever Black Lives Matter activists were saying as sort of
Speaker 12: the gospel of what sort of black popular opinion was,
Speaker 12: and we know that that's just not true. I cite
Speaker 12: a lot of polling in the piece, for example, that
Speaker 12: it's simply not the case that the average Black American
Speaker 12: wants to abolish the police, defund the police, or even
Speaker 12: reduce police presence in their.
Speaker 7: Neighborhoods.
Speaker 12: In fact, in poll after poll, black respondents say that
Speaker 12: they want the police presence in their neighborhoods to remain
Speaker 12: the same or to even increase in dramatic majorities, which
Speaker 12: of course makes sense if you are among class of
Speaker 12: people for whom violent crime is much more likely to occur.
Speaker 12: It's natural to want more police in your neighborhood. If
Speaker 12: you have less property because you're more poor as a
Speaker 12: class of people, it's natural to want more police in
Speaker 12: your neighborhood. But that kind of attitude was really forbot
Speaker 12: in within our elite media class in twenty twenty, because
Speaker 12: they wanted to associate all of Black America with a
Speaker 12: sort of very thin slice of the activist class, which
Speaker 12: is hyper educated, which is overwhelmingly concentrated in urban parts
Speaker 12: of the country, which is inculturated into a certain elite
Speaker 12: sort of status and vocabulary, which sort of emerges from
Speaker 12: this meritocratic space. In the fact that the medium black democrat,
Speaker 12: so the more left lying are You know, the average
Speaker 12: person is fairly liberal economically, but in fact, the media
Speaker 12: and Black Democrat has always been slightly to the right
Speaker 12: of the party's mainstream when it comes to social issues.
Speaker 7: And it's just not true that every Black American is
Speaker 7: a radical activist, and it would be bizarre.
Speaker 3: If it was so.
Speaker 1: But you wouldn't deny that there was an organic, national,
Speaker 1: widespread reaction in response to the murder of George Floyd,
Speaker 1: and that the core of that reaction was about changing
Speaker 1: the way that police police operate, and specifically changing the
Speaker 1: way that police operate in overwhelmingly black neighborhoods.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I mean again, the basic premise of this book is
Speaker 12: that anything that we have a moral duty to do,
Speaker 12: we have a moral duty to do well. Right, So
Speaker 12: if you say we have a moral duty to prevent
Speaker 12: police violence against black people, I would absolutely agree. I
Speaker 12: would say that that's one of our most sacred political
Speaker 12: duties right now, and we did a terrible job of
Speaker 12: it in twenty twenty of.
Speaker 7: Advancing that cause.
Speaker 12: There is just profoundly little on the ground difference in
Speaker 12: terms of how policing is being done in this country
Speaker 12: in a moment in which we had enormous media attention
Speaker 12: when there was more goodwill than you can possibly imagine.
Speaker 12: I think that this is forgotten. As I refer to
Speaker 12: in the book, there was a period immediately after George
Speaker 12: Floyd's murder when even majorities of Republicans in some polls
Speaker 12: were expressing favorable views of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Speaker 12: That was an incredibly fertile moment for real change, and
Speaker 12: real change didn't happen. So yes, absolutely, the George Floyd
Speaker 12: moment was a moment in which we should have gotten
Speaker 12: serious and made some real changes to American policing. I
Speaker 12: think that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which
Speaker 12: is a bill before that went before Congress.
Speaker 7: Uh you know, is it.
Speaker 12: Flawed like any other big omnibus legislation is. But I
Speaker 12: think it had a lot of great provisions. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 12: sort of died in the middle because the activist class
Speaker 12: said that it was a watered down compromise and they
Speaker 12: didn't want to hear about it being sort of a
Speaker 12: major goal. And then you know, it sort of got
Speaker 12: lost in the mayre of.
Speaker 7: Of democratic centrism on the other side.
Speaker 1: So let me let me get you to respond to
Speaker 1: one piece of the Washington Post review because they're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, you're making the case here that basically, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing really changed at federal level, Like that's indisputable, nothing
Speaker 1: changed literally, But they say, you know, at the local level,
Speaker 1: there were things that happened, and I'll just read this book.
Speaker 1: They say that he makes much of the lack of
Speaker 1: ensuing federal legislation. Not all meaningful change takes place at
Speaker 1: the national level, and not all institutional overhaul is enshrined
Speaker 1: in law. BLM prompted innumerable legal reforms in states and cities,
Speaker 1: among them the reallocation of police funds in La bans
Speaker 1: on choke holds in deer gas in Colorado, but it
Speaker 1: also inspired a generation and progressive prosecutors who vowed to
Speaker 1: change the criminal justice system from within. What's your response
Speaker 1: to that sort of pushback?
Speaker 12: Sure, so, I mean, I think as I go through
Speaker 12: in the book, a number of those reforms has since
Speaker 12: been rolled back. I mean, Minneapolis, which is where George
Speaker 12: Floyd was killed, is the sort of the prototypical example
Speaker 12: where the city council responded to that by voting to
Speaker 12: dissolve the current police department and build a new one
Speaker 12: that was then in the future changed to simply reducing
Speaker 12: the budget of the existing police force, and then after
Speaker 12: that they increased the budget of the existing police force,
Speaker 12: so everything was completely undone over time. There have been
Speaker 12: some things that have been in specific locations, but I
Speaker 12: also mentioned things that appear not to have worked. So
Speaker 12: for example, in Portland where drugs have been effectively decriminalized
Speaker 12: in many ways, so essentially you get a ticket and
Speaker 12: an offer to go to rehab, but no one's forcing
Speaker 12: you to go to rehab, and has led to just
Speaker 12: spiraling overdose races in those places. But the overarching point
Speaker 12: I would make is again, compare what she is saying
Speaker 12: as success to the demands that were being made in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty. Again, we weren't saying, let's have some limited
Speaker 12: local reforms that create some sort of positive good for
Speaker 12: police violence against black people. Know, what was being demanded
Speaker 12: was that we completely change our relationship towards race. Those
Speaker 12: reforms don't amount to that. The media and black American
Speaker 12: and the average Black American out there is likely seeing
Speaker 12: nothing substantial in the differences with their local police force
Speaker 12: at all, And at some point you have to ask, right,
Speaker 12: like all this money got bored into a bunch of
Speaker 12: institutions who did things like, you know, create scholarship programs
Speaker 12: or beef up their DEI wings. That you have to
Speaker 12: ask if that's actually the last thing impact of the
Speaker 12: twenty twenty moment, just that a lot of bureaucrats got paid.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, I mean, I don't think there's any
Speaker 2: way not insured from your book or just subjective analysis,
Speaker 2: that's obviously what happened. I mean, that's why I think
Speaker 2: that your PMC point is so accurate. It's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: now every company that goes public on the Nasdaq has
Speaker 2: to have what like a blacker minority person on the board.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, but it doesn't change the way that
Speaker 2: they do business. Or as you said, you know, whenever
Speaker 2: we're talking about DEI bureaucrats, that ever explode, but there's
Speaker 2: no evidence that it's actually helping like materially the lives
Speaker 2: of you know, your average I brought black working class
Speaker 2: citizen you write, or what they take away of yours
Speaker 2: is that leftist movements are to have a greater impact
Speaker 2: in the future. He can clude they should strive to
Speaker 2: reflect the interests of the working classes agitate for material,
Speaker 2: not merely cultural reforms, and focus on what Debor regards
Speaker 2: as a universally invigorating question of economic inequality rather than
Speaker 2: racism and sexism, which he takes to be more divisive.
Speaker 2: Now she takes a little bit of an issue with that,
Speaker 2: But defend your thesis. Then you know, there's we always
Speaker 2: have the war. We've had it here plenty of times
Speaker 2: on the show. It's not race, it's class, class, not war.
Speaker 2: They're inextricably linked. You're following much harder on the economic question.
Speaker 2: Why is it though that if you do care about
Speaker 2: those interests that were originally express which I totally agree
Speaker 2: that a very small sliver pre riot May twenty twenty
Speaker 2: where something actually might have done, why would that have
Speaker 2: been a better tack than what ended up happening in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 12: This is kind of a petty thing that I used
Speaker 12: to do. This was mostly a thing that I would
Speaker 12: do in fights about Bernie versus.
Speaker 7: Hillary in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 12: But I've been doing it for a long time, which
Speaker 12: is when I'm in online you know, ship posting with.
Speaker 7: People and I am in.
Speaker 12: A fight about like sort of a identity politics versus
Speaker 12: class politics, I would copy and paste a quote from
Speaker 12: one of the Black Panthers and just put it out
Speaker 12: as though it was something that I was saying. So,
Speaker 12: for example, Bobby Seal, one of the founders of the
Speaker 12: Black Panthers, said, ours is not a.
Speaker 7: Race struggle, ours is a class struggle.
Speaker 12: Or Fred Hampton is someone who said over and over
Speaker 12: again that you can't beat racism with black capitalism, you
Speaker 12: beat racism with communism. I would just take those quotes
Speaker 12: and I'd throw them out there without attributing them, and
Speaker 12: then people would say, oh, look what.
Speaker 7: A racist you know, a class productionist.
Speaker 12: You are, And then I would reveal that it was
Speaker 12: Black Panthers who had said those things, because I'm a
Speaker 12: petty person.
Speaker 7: But the point is this stuff is not is written
Speaker 7: into the history of.
Speaker 12: The liberation struggles for people of color, is written into
Speaker 12: the history of feminism. If you go back, for example,
Speaker 12: to the periods of the Suffragettes, it would have been
Speaker 12: totally are for them to sort of say, well, there's
Speaker 12: six issues, gender issues, and then there's economic issues. Core
Speaker 12: to their complaints were that those things were intertwined. The
Speaker 12: reason we should appeal the classes because it's just math, right,
Speaker 12: One of the things I've said in the book, which
Speaker 12: some of its critics have ignored, is that, like, look,
Speaker 12: conservatives play identity politics as much as liberals do. If
Speaker 12: you want to sort of attack identity politics in theory,
Speaker 12: you should be attacking Republicans as well as Democrats. The
Speaker 12: problem is is Republicans are in a much better position
Speaker 12: to do identity politics because identity politics that appeal to
Speaker 12: white people in states that are overrepresented in our system
Speaker 12: because of the Senate and the electoral College. That's just
Speaker 12: always going to be more powerful politically than it is
Speaker 12: going to be to appeal to black people who are
Speaker 12: in an enclave like Atlanta or DC, to queer people
Speaker 12: who are an enclave like New York and San Francisco.
Speaker 12: Reality is just there's a lot of white people. Seventy
Speaker 12: percent of the electorate is still even though only fifty
Speaker 12: nine percent of the country is white. At this point,
Speaker 12: the electorate is seventy percent white. White people are overrepresented
Speaker 12: because of the Senate and the electoral College.
Speaker 7: You just can't win that way if you keep doing it.
Speaker 12: But what you can do is you can say, hey, look,
Speaker 12: we have differences of opinion and differences of culture and
Speaker 12: differences that are racial or ethnic or whatever.
Speaker 7: But just about everybody knows.
Speaker 12: What it's like to be really freaked out about how
Speaker 12: they're going to get their rent money this month, right,
Speaker 12: And that potential coalition is just bigger than the coalitions
Speaker 12: that can be built by a bunch of brown graduates
Speaker 12: talking about intersectionality.
Speaker 7: It's just pure political math.
Speaker 12: Class is going to beat identity politics, in part because
Speaker 12: the whole point of elite identity politics is to nominate
Speaker 12: yourself as part of a minority of the enlightened.
Speaker 1: So, Freddy, I want to ask about this because this
Speaker 1: is something that I'm sort of working through in real time.
Speaker 1: So Democratic Party has made you know, the mainstream factions
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party have made it pretty explicit that,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't really care about working class base.
Speaker 1: They're happy to win if it's with more affluent, like
Speaker 1: college educated liberals. In this past election, you still had
Speaker 1: a majority of lower income people voting for Democrats, but
Speaker 1: this was the most sort of like college educated, affluent
Speaker 1: coalition they've ever had. But then you have, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in places like Minnesota and Illinois and Pennsylvania, you
Speaker 1: have governors and legislatures that were elected with this more affluent,
Speaker 1: college educated base that are genuinely doing better things than
Speaker 1: Democrats were doing during the Clinton era, better things the
Speaker 1: Democrats were doing during the Obama era. You know, they're
Speaker 1: actually paying attention to unions, they're actually in Minnesota strengthening
Speaker 1: collective marketing.
Speaker 5: And even with Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Who have got all kinds of ideological issues with his
Speaker 1: National Labor Relations Board, has been one of the most
Speaker 1: important institutions for working class people and unions. You know
Speaker 1: that has existed in my lifetime. And you might say
Speaker 1: that's a low bar. It is, but it's still way
Speaker 1: better than what was done under Obama, way better than
Speaker 1: what was done under Clinton, and like the sort of
Speaker 1: uniparty union busting that has been happening for most of
Speaker 1: my lifetime. So how do you square those two things that,
Speaker 1: at the same time that the coalition has gotten more
Speaker 1: highly educated, more affluent, more liberal, more upscale, you actually
Speaker 1: have some better wins for workers, especially if you focus
Speaker 1: at the state level.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 12: So, I mean, I would never suggest that there's no
Speaker 12: advantage to having the votes of people like me, right,
Speaker 12: I mean, I want to be very clear about this.
Speaker 7: I am a member of the class that I am
Speaker 7: critiquing in this book.
Speaker 12: I lived in Brooklyn for many years, I have a PhD.
Speaker 12: I write for Fancy Duda Publications, et cetera. I'm a
Speaker 12: part of that class, and I'm grateful for their support.
Speaker 12: I would say a few things first, that people like
Speaker 12: that tend to be reliable hit or miss on foreign policy.
Speaker 7: So, for example, it.
Speaker 12: Just simply appears to be no sort of like Park
Speaker 12: Slope resistance to funding Ukraine for the rest of our lives. Right, Like,
Speaker 12: that's not they don't care about that stuff. It's wonderful
Speaker 12: things that have been happening with these narrow majorities.
Speaker 7: But in the long run, you have to look.
Speaker 12: At the structural state of the Democratic Party, which is
Speaker 12: two things.
Speaker 7: That are very important.
Speaker 12: Number One, college enrollments have finally seriously leveled off after
Speaker 12: growing for more than a half century. Right So, I'm
Speaker 12: not sure if people are aware of this, but there's
Speaker 12: finally been a start of a back toning and maybe
Speaker 12: even a slight decline in the percentage of young people
Speaker 12: who are heading off to college, probably because their cost
Speaker 12: sensitive and they don't want to graduate with two hundred
Speaker 12: thousand dollars worth of debt and so number one, like
Speaker 12: the primary growth of the Democratic coalition in recent years
Speaker 12: has been this traumatic sort of a shift since the
Speaker 12: turn of the century when college educated people that are
Speaker 12: now heavily Democratic. But the other problem is that, as
Speaker 12: t Erra will tell you, the emergency Democratic majority myth,
Speaker 12: which is that the browning of the United States sometimes
Speaker 12: people call it, right, the increasingly less white in the
Speaker 12: United States, that was going to create a permanent Democratic majority,
Speaker 12: that has been just proven to be entirely false. Hispanic
Speaker 12: voters have been sprinting in the direction of the GOP,
Speaker 12: and we should have always suspected that that.
Speaker 7: Was going to happen.
Speaker 12: I mean, what you know, you listen to people talked
Speaker 12: about Hispanic Republicans as these race traders or something.
Speaker 7: You say to them.
Speaker 12: Look, if I say to you that I know a
Speaker 12: guy who lives on the border of Texas who owns
Speaker 12: his own ranch is an NRA member and a devout Catholic,
Speaker 12: you'd say, oh, that's a Republican. The fact that he's
Speaker 12: a Hispanic, that he's Hispanic, doesn't fundamentally change all those
Speaker 12: other signifiers. Right moving forward, if the if the losses from.
Speaker 7: Non white voters are real, uh.
Speaker 12: And the Hispanic people continue to grow as a portion
Speaker 12: of the population, while the Black population, which is the
Speaker 12: most reliably democratic block, stays stagnant as it has been
Speaker 12: for a long time.
Speaker 7: The math again just doesn't look good.
Speaker 12: So I'm very I'm very happy with what people are
Speaker 12: doing in these state in these states with these neuro majorities,
Speaker 12: and that's great, and thank you to all the voters
Speaker 12: of you know, like Georgetown or wherever who are sort
Speaker 12: of powering these sort of like white liberal Democrats who
Speaker 12: are very socially left. But the reality is big picture,
Speaker 12: long term, Uh, it doesn't look great for Democrats. And
Speaker 12: this is all happening in a period when there's just
Speaker 12: total incoherence at the top of the Republican Party. You
Speaker 12: can you can imagine if there was an actual competent candidate,
Speaker 12: right someone who knew what they were doing, didn't have
Speaker 12: appear to have a brain injury like Donald Trump, that
Speaker 12: like you know, they could be making incredible inroys right now.
Speaker 7: And I think it's a frightening time.
Speaker 1: So, Freddie, the last question I have for you, which
Speaker 1: is something that's been very inconvenient from my worldview, which
Speaker 1: is not dissimilar from yours about the importance of material politics,
Speaker 1: about you know, foregrounding class, about the importance of having
Speaker 1: multi racial coalition if you want to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: not only build out political power, but consistently not wins
Speaker 1: that are for the working class. One thing that's been
Speaker 1: very inconvenient for me is how powerful abortion politics have
Speaker 1: turned out to be. I mean, post war versus Wade listen,
Speaker 1: Republicans still won the House, but we have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the red wave certainly did not materialize. Even at a
Speaker 1: time when Americans were saying, my economic situation is absolute shit,
Speaker 1: and I don't trust the Democrats on the economy, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Abortion was really key in sort of overcoming
Speaker 1: that tie. In the other direction, we've seen in terms
Speaker 1: of special elections this year, Democrats have outperformed by ten
Speaker 1: points on ava. It's not in like one ininfl related incident,
Speaker 1: but on average in every special election we've had this year.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's not one hundred percent abortion, but
Speaker 1: that's a really big part of it. So how does
Speaker 1: that square with your political theory? And I'm partly asking
Speaker 1: this of your selfish way, because I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how it scores my political theories of change as well.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 12: I actually think that that speaks perfectly to sort of
Speaker 12: my overall point here.
Speaker 7: What do we know about abortion?
Speaker 12: It is a cross race, cross class, cross education level,
Speaker 12: cross religion, et cetera issue, right, Abortion is like one
Speaker 12: of the great stealth issues in American politics, which is
Speaker 12: I think part of what happened with the demise of
Speaker 12: Roe Vwaid is there's a lot of women who might
Speaker 12: ostensibly be a pro life who have like a sort
Speaker 12: of intellectualized rejection of abortion, but when they're confronted with
Speaker 12: the possibility of carrying a baby the term that they
Speaker 12: don't want to right, suddenly their self interest activates and
Speaker 12: they realize I could be put in a position I
Speaker 12: really don't want to be. I think abortion is a
Speaker 12: perfect example of an issue that's incredibly rare, which is
Speaker 12: that it's sailient across all of these divides of ethnicity
Speaker 12: or education level or income, etc. Where every woman is
Speaker 12: in a state that does not have guaranteed right to
Speaker 12: abortions is at risk of having her life permanently altered
Speaker 12: by a pregnancy that she doesn't want to And so
Speaker 12: that is the kind of appeal that we need to
Speaker 12: make to people.
Speaker 7: The problem is is book.
Speaker 12: Of course, we have to fight for trans people, who
Speaker 12: are a population that is incredibly vulnerable and that faces
Speaker 12: all kinds of discrimination and violence. Of course, we have
Speaker 12: to fight for black people, who are just by every
Speaker 12: statistical measure taking it on the chin, still sixty plus
Speaker 12: years after the major civil rights of victories of the
Speaker 12: last century. But we have to do so in a
Speaker 12: way that demonstrates to people that is in their best
Speaker 12: interest to be part of these coalitions. I try to
Speaker 12: tell people this all the time. I'm a Marxist, and
Speaker 12: they think it's weird when I talk about the politics
Speaker 12: of self interest, like only iron Rand ever talked.
Speaker 7: About politics of self interest.
Speaker 12: In fact, Karl Marx himself said, look, the only way
Speaker 12: you ever move people politically is by appealing to their
Speaker 12: own best interest, and so you need to find a
Speaker 12: way to loop other people in with that.
Speaker 7: I think we can do that if we say.
Speaker 12: To people, hey, housing is insanely expensive, childcare and education
Speaker 12: are insanely expensive.
Speaker 7: Healthcare is insanely expensive. These are structural problems that the
Speaker 7: Republicans have no answer for. Let's look for things that
Speaker 7: actually work and can help all of us together.
Speaker 2: That's a really excellent answer, and this has been a
Speaker 2: really good discussion.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a link to the book down
Speaker 2: in the description. We encourage everybody to go and buy it,
Speaker 2: and we really appreciate your time, sir.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been really enjoying it. Friday, congrats again and
Speaker 1: great to have you.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having.
Speaker 3: Me, Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you tomorrow
Speaker 7: In the s