Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
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Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. Ryan, we
Speaker 2: have you sitting in for Crystal. Thank you very much
Speaker 2: for joining us, sir.
Speaker 4: It's my pleasure to be here. I would never miss
Speaker 4: a Bro show.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Bro shows. The people are loving the broch got.
Speaker 2: We got some very very ambitious crossovers. Some are saying
Speaker 2: the most ambitious crossovers in the history of the Breaking
Speaker 2: Points universe happening this week. Why are these crossovers happening? Well,
Speaker 2: our very own Crystal Ball. I wanted to say congratulations
Speaker 2: to her. She had a beautiful wedding on Saturday to
Speaker 2: Kyle Kolinsky, and we put together a little photo collage
Speaker 2: we can exclusively share here. It's kind of like People magazine,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and put these up the screen, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: These were curated by Crystal herself everybody, so don't worry.
Speaker 2: I did check with the bride before we were able
Speaker 2: to share these.
Speaker 3: Just absolutely stunning.
Speaker 4: Having the paparazzi out there paying off.
Speaker 2: Paparazzi aka me and our camera guys that we had
Speaker 2: up there. I personally my favorite part, aside from the dress,
Speaker 2: of course, ladies, you guys can go that, it was
Speaker 2: the flowers. Crystal from people who don't know, is obsessed
Speaker 2: with flowers and that was one of those things that
Speaker 2: it was just like icing on the cake.
Speaker 3: At the wedding. Kyle also looked great.
Speaker 2: I personally, personally just my opinion, I like the hair
Speaker 2: better this.
Speaker 4: Way was all but all about the flowers too.
Speaker 5: She's very discerning too, so whenever she throws out a compliment,
Speaker 5: it's like, really right, Oh, that's like flowers.
Speaker 4: Are right now.
Speaker 3: My fiance is like, hey, now we need to have
Speaker 3: nice flowers. I'm like, yeah, hold on second, we'll talk
Speaker 3: about it anyway.
Speaker 2: So we just wanted to say from from our from
Speaker 2: our whole team over here at breaking points, from behind
Speaker 2: the scenes, and in front of the camera. How much
Speaker 2: we are so happy we are for Crystal and she's
Speaker 2: gonna have a great honeymoon. Kyle should be back in
Speaker 2: the chair next week. We love her and we miss
Speaker 2: her very much. I already do, to be honest.
Speaker 3: So it was. It was a beautiful ceremony.
Speaker 2: Also, shout out to mary Anne Williams and I will
Speaker 2: say this, the best vows at a wedding ceremony I
Speaker 2: have ever heard, the absolute best.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Anyway, Yeah, she's quite the MC.
Speaker 2: She's very much so, so I'm taking notes. Everybody else
Speaker 2: should as well. Mary Anne told me that apparently her
Speaker 2: vows are available in one of her books, So this
Speaker 2: is not.
Speaker 3: This is me saying it. Go check them out. I'm serious.
Speaker 2: If you have a wedding ceremony or whatever coming up,
Speaker 2: very much worth possibly incorporating. Anyways, once again, everybody leave
Speaker 2: a comment, Premium describers and everybody congratulate, congratulations very much
Speaker 2: to Crystal. We will miss her very much dearly. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and get to the show. We got
Speaker 2: a lot of fun stuff. First of all, I may
Speaker 2: an unexpected cameo in the Trump deposition, so we'll.
Speaker 3: Break that down for you to start that off.
Speaker 2: Biden also stunning a new poll coming out which is
Speaker 2: honestly humiliating for him, showing him losing to Trump. Of course,
Speaker 2: we wanted to talk a little bit about that terrible
Speaker 2: situation that happened on the New York City subway which
Speaker 2: resulted in the death of homeless man. It's ignited quite
Speaker 2: a bit of discourse across the Internet about whether it
Speaker 2: was justified or whether it was.
Speaker 3: A lynching in cold blood.
Speaker 2: And actually, I think Ryan and I are going to
Speaker 2: try and get to a place where we're going to
Speaker 2: get past much of the cultural war and actually get
Speaker 2: to what the pros quote unquote solutions are outside of
Speaker 2: discourse about crime and all that, and be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: well we all agree I got to do something about this, right,
Speaker 2: but like, what is it and what can be done?
Speaker 3: How we balance liberty.
Speaker 2: I think you guys will enjoy it because it's going
Speaker 2: to be a more nuanced discussion you're going to hear
Speaker 2: anywhere else. Developments with the Hunter Biden investigation and his
Speaker 2: own problems and fights with the White House, and then
Speaker 2: finally Tucker Carlson indicating he may want to declare war
Speaker 2: on Fox News. I also do I want to say
Speaker 2: before we start the show, just thank you all so
Speaker 2: much for the premium subscribers who've been signing up. It
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Speaker 2: you know, this is just stage one. We're watching the
Speaker 2: failures of BuzzFeed and Vice Ryan, and one of the
Speaker 2: big mistakes they made is they got way too big,
Speaker 2: too fast, and we are very much committed.
Speaker 3: You know, even with Counterpoints.
Speaker 2: It was like, okay, we've got breaking points down, now
Speaker 2: let's do counterpoints. We're going to refine that, right, and
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Speaker 3: Monthly, yearly in lifetime.
Speaker 2: I will only just say from a cash flow perspective,
Speaker 2: it very much helps the yearly and the lifetime at
Speaker 2: this time as the bills are showing out. So enough
Speaker 2: of that, let's start with the that position. Ryan, you
Speaker 2: actually helped to curate this one a little bit. For
Speaker 2: those who don't know, I interviewed Trump back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: and during that interview we talked about a lot of
Speaker 2: subjects Iran, you know, Iran and the Iran deal. There
Speaker 2: was the Vatican. There was a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: was going on there. The very last question though, Sarah
Speaker 2: Sanders came to me because that day e Gene Carrol,
Speaker 2: who you might know, famous actress, had accused Donald Trump
Speaker 2: of rape. And as right it before I'm about to
Speaker 2: walk into the Oval, me and this guy Jordan Fabian
Speaker 2: used to work with the Hill. She's like, hey, let's
Speaker 2: let's just stay away from that, and Jordan and I
Speaker 2: looked at each other we were like, yeah, totally, We're like,
Speaker 2: we're totally.
Speaker 3: Not going to ask about that. And then so what
Speaker 3: we did is a drive to ask.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Obviously, well we were like, uh huh, absolutely, let's just
Speaker 2: go on in there. We'll see right, And of course,
Speaker 2: so tried and true reporter tactic, as you know, Ryan,
Speaker 2: is you say what is most likely to be the
Speaker 2: most incendiary part very last, because if they kick you out,
Speaker 2: then you've already asked everything else.
Speaker 3: Yes, say you want.
Speaker 2: So we can notice that his team's kind of wrapping
Speaker 2: us up and they want this all us to come
Speaker 2: to an end. I looked at Jordan and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go. So we ask him about the Egene Carroll thing,
Speaker 2: and we were the first, of course to get his
Speaker 2: response iconic now, in which he said, quote, she's not
Speaker 2: my type. And that's actually the very first thing that
Speaker 2: he said. He said, first of all, she's not I
Speaker 2: will personally never forget that moment. It was absolutely surreal
Speaker 2: to see him sitting behind the resolute desk and saying that.
Speaker 2: Now though Egen Carroll's actually suing him in a civil
Speaker 2: court and actually got a deposition, much of it being
Speaker 2: funded by the billionaire Reed Hoffman. We'll talk about that
Speaker 2: a little bit later. During Ryan's monologue. However, my Name
Speaker 2: made a cameo in that which then led to an
Speaker 2: iconic moment where Trump appears not to recognize his own
Speaker 2: ex wife Marla Maple and mistakes her for Egen Carrol
Speaker 2: after saying she's not my type. So we put together
Speaker 2: a little package for you.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: You have in front of you, sir, a document five
Speaker 7: page documents. The first page says an in bold type
Speaker 7: exclusive Trump vehemently denies Egan Carrol allegation, says she's not
Speaker 7: my type. It's from a publication Knows the Hill. It
Speaker 7: stated June twenty fourth, twenty nineteen, and it's attributed to
Speaker 7: the gentleman Jordan Fabian and or maybe not be gentlemen.
Speaker 7: It's attributed to two people, Jordan Fabian and Cigar and
Speaker 7: gente is.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, so maybe not the gentleman.
Speaker 4: I guess that's so good.
Speaker 2: So whether I'm a gentleman or not is up for
Speaker 2: breaking points to decide. What do you make of that?
Speaker 3: Before we get to the Marlon Maples thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, my favorite thing about journalism really is these
Speaker 5: accidental stumblings into history that we end up making because
Speaker 5: you look back in your life and like, these things
Speaker 5: probably would have unfolded if I was never born.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, yeah, I played a role
Speaker 4: in this, yes thing.
Speaker 3: It's very small.
Speaker 5: If I don't ask him about this, he doesn't make
Speaker 5: this absurd claim, although maybe he makes it eventually at
Speaker 5: a rally or probably I think I think he ended
Speaker 5: up later did but then it winds up in a deposition,
Speaker 5: and then it winds up and I was like, sorry,
Speaker 5: you're a man of history, because we got to play
Speaker 5: this next clip because this is what it leads to,
Speaker 5: which is just incredible to roll this second one.
Speaker 8: I don't even know who the woman. Let's see, I
Speaker 8: don't know who. It's Marla.
Speaker 3: You said, Marl's in this photo.
Speaker 8: That's Marla. Yeah, that's that's my wife.
Speaker 7: Which woman are you pointing to?
Speaker 1: Other?
Speaker 8: Now here person?
Speaker 7: Carroll point and the person the woman on the right
Speaker 7: is your then wife.
Speaker 8: I don't know this was the picture. I assume that's
Speaker 8: John Johnson. Is that because it's very blurry.
Speaker 2: So he confuses Marla Maples with his sorry Egen Carroll,
Speaker 2: the woman who was accusing him of rape, and who
Speaker 2: with his ex Wifela Maples, after saying quote, she's not
Speaker 2: my type anyway.
Speaker 5: I've never seen anybody's credibility undermine more thoroughly than that.
Speaker 3: It's very, very hard to get caught in.
Speaker 5: A not my type sign of lie until you then say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's that's my wife.
Speaker 2: But then he's like, it's very blurry. So there are
Speaker 2: several options. A. Possibly she is his type. Look as
Speaker 2: the accusation itself, who the hell knows, having like nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty whatever. As I said, being funded by the billionaire
Speaker 2: reied Hoffman. Trump is actually not even mounting in defense.
Speaker 2: He's basically like, this entire thing at BS and I'm
Speaker 2: not going to participate in this.
Speaker 3: He was forced and eventually to testify.
Speaker 5: From my perspective, as far as allegations go, like she
Speaker 5: told a decent number of people at the time, her
Speaker 5: story sounds credible.
Speaker 3: His story keeps falling apart and.
Speaker 5: Being like every time he claim makes a claim I've
Speaker 5: never even been to bergor or whatever, it's like that
Speaker 5: falls apart.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's fair from me.
Speaker 2: But trying to litigate a me too thing from the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties whatever.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's put that aside.
Speaker 2: The irony here obviously, of course, it's actually pretty extraordinary
Speaker 2: to get a former president to be to post. Part
Speaker 2: of why I suspect reed Hoffman the billionaire funded the
Speaker 2: case in the first place. Second, though, just leading to
Speaker 2: this very amusing interaction. So I think we have possible explanations. A.
Speaker 2: Possibly she is his type.
Speaker 3: That's one. Two though, is that might be a little
Speaker 3: bit of a Biden moment. That might be a little
Speaker 3: old man moment.
Speaker 2: There confusing his ex wife from the nineteen eighties with
Speaker 2: this other woman.
Speaker 3: You know, that's like a classic one.
Speaker 2: We haven't seen as many you know, Biden moments from Trump,
Speaker 2: of course, but who knows. You know, he is seventy
Speaker 2: eight years old, so he's not that far away from
Speaker 2: Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 5: It is wild that the seventy eight year old man
Speaker 5: gets to go into the race as the spring chicken.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, yeah, the oldest Trump would be the one
Speaker 2: of the oldest men all I believe. I guess he'd
Speaker 2: be type with Biden. I should he hold the Oval Office?
Speaker 2: Just an amusing aside there to see my own personal
Speaker 2: role in all of this. I will never forget that moment,
Speaker 2: he said, not because he did it in the most
Speaker 2: trumpy and fashion like, leaned back in his chair right
Speaker 2: behind the desk, put up the hands and he was like,
Speaker 2: not my tie, it's burned into my memud.
Speaker 5: Did it feel like he had that ready or like, no,
Speaker 5: it was totally spontaneous.
Speaker 3: It was totally spontaneous because also I could tell that
Speaker 3: despite the fact.
Speaker 2: That Sarah Sanders had told us that she didn't want
Speaker 2: us to ask it, he was begging you want, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he won. I think he had it ready. I think
Speaker 2: he had it ready in his head. You can just
Speaker 2: tell it was one of those things he was flipping
Speaker 2: through channels that morning. He said, huh, she's not even
Speaker 2: my type. But that was like the first thing that
Speaker 2: came to his head, and that's what he decided to
Speaker 2: go with. And yet despite that, as despite that, that
Speaker 2: is the person who was running against Joe Biden should
Speaker 2: be easy, right, and yet it doesn't appear all that easy.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and put this pole up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. Okay, so what do we see here? Well,
Speaker 2: things are rah not so good here, Ryan, What do
Speaker 2: you think who do you think did a better job
Speaker 2: of handling the economy? Donald Trump when he was president
Speaker 2: or Joe Biden during his presidency So far? Trump fifty
Speaker 2: four percent, Biden thirty six percent, neither seven percent not
Speaker 2: in a opinion three percent. The reason why this is
Speaker 2: so important, Ryan, is that all throughout the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 2: every single time that we heard, oh, Trump doesn't have
Speaker 2: a chance. Trump doesn't have a chance. He's losing head
Speaker 2: to head Biden, losing head to head Biden. The Trump
Speaker 2: campaign and several other polar polling people who got it
Speaker 2: more right than they were always said, But look at
Speaker 2: the economy number, and all the way up until the
Speaker 2: day of the twenty twenty election, Donald Trump led Joe
Speaker 2: Biden on the economy, and that economic figure ended up
Speaker 2: being a far better predictor of the twenty twenty outcome
Speaker 2: in the race, specifically in the battleground states. Now, of course,
Speaker 2: Biden won a very narrow victory, only thirty thousand votes
Speaker 2: across three different states. But the more important thing is
Speaker 2: that not only is this Biden v. Trump in terms
Speaker 2: of economic numbers, his Biden's numbers are actually lower in
Speaker 2: battleground states places like Pennsylvania, in Arizona, in Michigan for example, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: across the industrial Midwest, making it much more of a
Speaker 2: jump ball than people are willing to realize.
Speaker 5: And I think he has to be the least popular
Speaker 5: incumbent president going into reelection that has unified party support
Speaker 5: and the belief among party leaders that he's going to.
Speaker 3: Win smart like you've never had that combination before.
Speaker 5: Normally, it's like Jimmy Carter unpopular president. A lot of
Speaker 5: people are nervous that he's going to lose to whoever
Speaker 5: Republicans put up in nineteen eighty and you even get
Speaker 5: Ted Kennedy running a primary against him to have a
Speaker 5: LBJ in nineteen.
Speaker 4: Absolutely sixty eight, sixty eight. He is deeply.
Speaker 5: Unpopular and the party leader's like, you know what, he
Speaker 5: might lose and that opens up possibility. But now party
Speaker 5: leaders just believe that he's going to win, and they
Speaker 5: don't care what poll numbers, they don't care what the
Speaker 5: American people say about whether or not they're going to
Speaker 5: vote for Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: They just are heading the sand confident.
Speaker 5: You know what, Biden's got this and therefore there can
Speaker 5: be no challenge to him. We can't think about any
Speaker 5: other alternative process here. We can't gently nudge him aside.
Speaker 5: There's not even the remotest kind of talk of that.
Speaker 5: It's a really striking moment, and maybe it has to
Speaker 5: do with the hyperpolarization that we're now in, which we
Speaker 5: were not in in nineteen sixty eight and nineteen eighty.
Speaker 5: Those are times where lots of people are switching parties
Speaker 5: from every four year Richard Nixon launching the EPA, stuff
Speaker 5: like that. And so because everybody's so polarized, it's like, well,
Speaker 5: I'm a Democrat, this is our guy, and that's it
Speaker 5: and that's it done.
Speaker 4: Conversation's over.
Speaker 5: When we'll talk about Simone Sanders, that's space most response.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, though, is that this is still manifesting and
Speaker 2: deep unease for a lot of Americans. This one also,
Speaker 2: you can't just put this stuff in a bottle, put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. You know, right now,
Speaker 2: sixty three percent of people say that Biden does not
Speaker 2: have the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president. And
Speaker 2: that just shows you, do you even Trump? Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is at fifty four percent majority of Americans. You know,
Speaker 2: many new people don't even like Trump, but they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's got the mental acuity and he's more.
Speaker 3: Sharp enough to serve.
Speaker 2: Well for Biden, it's only thirty two percent. I mean,
Speaker 2: when you've only got a third of the country that
Speaker 2: thinks that you are sharp enough to be president, now listen,
Speaker 2: I mean I think that people probably felt that way
Speaker 2: at least in some part in twenty twenty. But I
Speaker 2: think that the important thing is that the only forty
Speaker 2: three percent of Americans felt that way about Joe Biden
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, fifty four percent a year ago, and
Speaker 2: now up to sixty three percent. So it doesn't take
Speaker 2: a genius to see here that we're going exponential in
Speaker 2: the amount of the American people that think that he's
Speaker 2: way too old to be president or at the very
Speaker 2: least doesn't have the mental acuity to serve. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, only exposure is going to make that worse.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons that number has gotten up is
Speaker 2: because in twenty twenty he didn't do anything. All of
Speaker 2: his old man moments during the pandemic were confined to
Speaker 2: the basement. Well now it's like you can try Ryan
Speaker 2: hide in the White House, but it's inevitable you're going
Speaker 2: to talk. And he has all kinds of crazy dad
Speaker 2: moments like or not even dad, like great granddad moments
Speaker 2: like every other day, which are bad for him.
Speaker 4: Yes, and there's some of them I can't even watch,
Speaker 4: just just for the.
Speaker 3: Especially like oh.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean the idea that only fifty four
Speaker 5: percent of people think Trump has a mental acuity is staggering,
Speaker 5: and then to see that he's beating Biden in electing
Speaker 5: slide on that end, we had.
Speaker 4: A year and a half left to go.
Speaker 3: Good point.
Speaker 5: And the problem for Biden here is that everyone in
Speaker 5: the world has experience with people in their eighties and nineties,
Speaker 5: and we all know that some of them are extraordinarily crisp,
Speaker 5: and you would trust them with surgery even right. We
Speaker 5: also know that some of them not so much. And
Speaker 5: we also know that you can you can decline quickly.
Speaker 5: And this is not something that anybody had to go
Speaker 5: to college for or you know, be able to read
Speaker 5: scientific papers. It's just from her own experience of life.
Speaker 3: It's very human. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean just the other day, I was walking my
Speaker 2: dog and this woman was crossing the street and this
Speaker 2: very elderly woman just wasn't paying attention and came inches
Speaker 2: away from hitting this woman and she started crying. I
Speaker 2: could see her like holding her hand, and I was
Speaker 2: just like, look, this is really sad. She just realized
Speaker 2: in that moment. It's like, lady, you are way too
Speaker 2: old to drive. I'm sorry. Like, it's just not like
Speaker 2: you came inches away from taking another person's life.
Speaker 3: And we all know the story of the person.
Speaker 2: Who refuses to stop driving because they don't realize it
Speaker 2: when you're in the car and you're like, are ringing
Speaker 2: me okay here, like this is not so great, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's uncomfortable, Like I get it, and you know
Speaker 2: what the solution is.
Speaker 3: I honestly have no idea.
Speaker 2: Maybe mandatory testing over the age of seventy five, just
Speaker 2: throwing that out there. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, though, which is that this is manifesting politically
Speaker 2: because right now in the general election matchup, Trump has
Speaker 2: the edge.
Speaker 3: This is it. Right now?
Speaker 2: Thirty six percent say, thirty six percent say they're definitely
Speaker 2: voting for Trump, nine percent say they're going to vote Republican.
Speaker 2: On top of that, eighteen percent are undecided. And then
Speaker 2: only thirty eight percent of people say that they are
Speaker 2: definitely voting for Joe Biden or the Democrats. I mean,
Speaker 2: this has Trump up on Joe Biden in a head
Speaker 2: to head pole Now, listen, is that the major predictor?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: What did we all learn in twenty twenty two? Polls
Speaker 2: are totally wrong? They're wrong in the wrong in the
Speaker 2: other direction. Twenty twenty, they were wrong in the Trump direction.
Speaker 2: Here is my personal bias, as everybody knows here with polling.
Speaker 3: I think that.
Speaker 2: When Trump is off the ballot, polling somehow seems to
Speaker 2: normalize back to the twenty twelve world, like where polls.
Speaker 3: Were actually pretty accurate.
Speaker 2: If anything, they underestimated Obama, you know, they were there.
Speaker 2: But when Trump is on the ballot, he seems to
Speaker 2: have some sort of magical effect where you kind of
Speaker 2: just have to ply a price in like R plus
Speaker 2: five or something like that whenever I'm looking. So anyway,
Speaker 2: my point is that when I look at something like that,
Speaker 2: I'm like, actually, think Trump is probably even more head now.
Speaker 2: You though, as I just said, you can make the
Speaker 2: opposite case, like what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Soccer? Stop?
Speaker 2: The steel just got crushed all across the country. Roe
Speaker 2: Versus way historically unpopular. You know, these idiots can't even
Speaker 2: win a referendum in Kansas. You know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: how do you think that's going to work out? So
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure where I fall, but I just think,
Speaker 2: like I see signs of peril. I'm the fundamentals is
Speaker 2: not good for Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and a lot of progressives looked at this poll
Speaker 5: and whenever and whenever either side gets a bad poll,
Speaker 5: they lift the hood up and they become polling excep.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was overweighted in this one particular.
Speaker 5: Like you young people in the old Yeah, on this one.
Speaker 5: The thing that they were dunking on the poll for
Speaker 5: was being of all adults rather than either registered voters
Speaker 5: or likely voters. But there's cross tabs inside it that
Speaker 5: are for registered voters, and it's not much better for
Speaker 5: Biden in there, like by a hair, it's slightly better.
Speaker 5: And they pulled over a thousand adults, so you're going
Speaker 5: to have a sample size of plenty.
Speaker 4: Of registered voter.
Speaker 5: So you know the fact that the kind of first
Speaker 5: justification or defense of the poll from progressives kind of
Speaker 5: fell apart as soon as you kind of looked closer
Speaker 5: to the poll.
Speaker 4: Now, like you said, it's just one poll.
Speaker 5: Nobody should change their mind about an election that's eighteen
Speaker 5: months away based on one poll. But nobody should think
Speaker 5: that this is going to be the slam dunk that
Speaker 5: it's going to be. I think the reason that Democrats
Speaker 5: have that confidence that I was talking about earlier is
Speaker 5: that basically every time Biden's been on the ballot since
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, sorry, Trump has been on the ballot since
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, he's gotten hammered twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, and
Speaker 5: then again in twenty twenty two when they were able
Speaker 5: to kind of nationalize the election around Trump by rating
Speaker 5: mar A Lago and getting him in as like the boogeyman.
Speaker 4: That would get Democrats out of the vote.
Speaker 5: So that's three elections in a row where Democrats have
Speaker 5: felt like Trump was on the ballot and they were
Speaker 5: able to bring out enough turn out and beat him,
Speaker 5: so that they really are thinking, like, that's that's we're
Speaker 5: going to be again.
Speaker 3: Listen, it's a good case. It's certainly possible.
Speaker 2: The whole point is is like possibility does not equal eventuality.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's like, and the probability is so
Speaker 2: high or of Trump being able to win that you
Speaker 2: really just need to make you need to make your
Speaker 2: peace with that and then try and fight a contested election.
Speaker 3: Put the next one that is up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: This is just the general right up.
Speaker 2: Really, what they say is just that Biden faces broad
Speaker 2: negative ratings at the start of the campaign. Now all
Speaker 2: of this can be solved. Don't get us wrong. There
Speaker 2: are lots of things could happen. Eighteen months from now.
Speaker 2: The war in Ukraine could be over. You know, gas
Speaker 2: prices could be back at like two point fifty. I
Speaker 2: think people are going to be being like COVID. Who
Speaker 2: the economy could? You know? The Fed seems to be pausing.
Speaker 2: Maybe the economy will get back. Who knows the other
Speaker 2: Here's the other option. The war in Ukraine is a
Speaker 2: horrific disaster. It's finally spiking gas back up to five.
Speaker 2: There's a recession because we have more supply. Both of
Speaker 2: those cases are easy ones where you could see things
Speaker 2: changing completely. So this is in no way saying that
Speaker 2: this is going to predict the results. It's only that
Speaker 2: he faces a real problem, and if I were him,
Speaker 2: I would be doing everything possible to try and work
Speaker 2: myself out of this problem. But that's the one thing
Speaker 2: I know also that Joe Biden refuses to do. It
Speaker 2: barely works, It works for four hours a day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, your gas price point is key because who controls
Speaker 5: gas prices and put in an MBS, Yeah, and so
Speaker 5: MBS every single time he's been asked by Trump has
Speaker 5: done what is beneficial to Trump? So expect gas prices
Speaker 5: I think next summer to go back up to four
Speaker 5: dollars a gallon, with MBS restricting.
Speaker 4: It so that he can get Bien now there.
Speaker 5: It's amazing that they have this incredible economy right now,
Speaker 5: lowesst unemployment rate in like fifty years, lowest black unemployment
Speaker 5: rate in history, down to three point four percent for
Speaker 5: the overall uneployed rate, where wages rising at four point
Speaker 5: four percent, while inflation is cooling. Yet if you talk
Speaker 5: to a lot of voters, I'll say, what has Biden
Speaker 5: done for me? And I think it goes back to
Speaker 5: his failure to increase the minimum wage. That's not just
Speaker 5: beneficial to millions of people around the country, but it
Speaker 5: would be a symbol that he could point to, like
Speaker 5: what did I do?
Speaker 4: I raised the minimum wage? And they fought you on that,
Speaker 4: and they.
Speaker 5: Had a chance to do that, they had a chance
Speaker 5: to put it in the American Rescue Plan, but oh gee,
Speaker 5: the parliamentarian got to respect the parliamentarian.
Speaker 4: And so because of that he can say.
Speaker 5: Okay, unemployments down. But then people say, okay, well, unemployments down.
Speaker 5: How much credit do you get for that? And also
Speaker 5: inflation is up, so I'm not so excited about the
Speaker 5: jobs market because I'm still nervous about inflation.
Speaker 4: If he had something to.
Speaker 5: Point to, like I raised the wage, I agree with you,
Speaker 5: that would be just a knockout blog.
Speaker 2: Right instead of well, I'm going to make sure that
Speaker 2: they don't take control so that they might not pass
Speaker 2: this unpopular thing on abortion.
Speaker 3: Although listen, it has worked, as we.
Speaker 2: Have found out for a Democratic of gubernatorial candidates like Greshen,
Speaker 2: Whitmer and others.
Speaker 3: You can do a terrible job, you can still get
Speaker 3: re elected.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's like, don't put that outside of
Speaker 2: very very easy.
Speaker 3: Now let's go to the next one.
Speaker 2: Here, just a mask off moment on MSNBC, which I
Speaker 2: just love, you know, in terms of the whole Biden
Speaker 2: propaganda nature of this, not only do they hire the
Speaker 2: express secretary, now they have the first started by hiring
Speaker 2: Kamala's ex operative Simone Sanders. She goes on Morning Joe's
Speaker 2: MSNBC and says, definitively, there will not be a single
Speaker 2: Democratic debate.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to what she said.
Speaker 9: Bobby Kennedy Jr. Doing well, he's at nineteen percent, hasn't
Speaker 9: really gotten that much out there. I mean, it's and
Speaker 9: I'm starting to hear more and more talk about him.
Speaker 9: Are we going to actually have a challenge here?
Speaker 3: I'm trying not to laugh. Yet they're not willing to.
Speaker 3: Can can I sep you first sight?
Speaker 9: Do you know how many people said the same thing
Speaker 9: about Donald Trump in twenty fifteen?
Speaker 3: Yes, the same exactly, Yeah, because.
Speaker 6: There was going to be a Republican primary. But I
Speaker 6: really think that the meeting of Democrats is I like
Speaker 6: to call them and some of my progressive friends who
Speaker 6: would like to live in a fantasy land, they need
Speaker 6: to come back to reality.
Speaker 3: And the reality is this.
Speaker 6: The sitting president of the United States of America is
Speaker 6: a Democrat, a Democrat that would like to run for
Speaker 6: re elections, so much so that he has declared a
Speaker 6: re election campaign. In that case, the Democratic National Committee
Speaker 6: will not facilitate the primary process. There will be no
Speaker 6: debate stage for Bobby Kennedy, Marian Williams, or anyone else.
Speaker 9: We're going to have another joining in an empty chair
Speaker 9: in the debate, right.
Speaker 4: There will be no debating debate.
Speaker 6: The Democratic National Committee administers the debates, and they're not
Speaker 6: going to set up a primary process for debates too,
Speaker 6: for someone to challenge the head of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: As you point out, and I have as well. I
Speaker 2: literally have the RFK book right behind me. It's not
Speaker 2: like there wasn't precedent for this in history. RFK says,
Speaker 2: we need to save the Democratic Party from LBJ Vietnam.
Speaker 2: The country is a disaster. Richard Nixon is going to
Speaker 2: win if I don't do this comes in. You know,
Speaker 2: obviously it was tragically his life was cut short. Who
Speaker 2: knows how that happened. That's a question another day.
Speaker 3: Thank you. We will ask you to believe, we will
Speaker 3: ask honestly.
Speaker 2: He's raising some good questions anyway, So we put that
Speaker 2: to the side. Then we have literally the primary process
Speaker 2: facilitated as I understand it, Ryan by the DNC in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty whenever Ted Kennedy decided to challenge Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 2: And as I've pointed out here before on the show,
Speaker 2: I'm curious what your read on it is.
Speaker 3: I think Carter was a doomed candidate no matter what
Speaker 3: that said.
Speaker 2: I think he probably did a better job in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty presidential election against Reagan because he had to
Speaker 2: challenge and defend his beliefs against Ted Kennedy by definitively
Speaker 2: winning the primary, he maintains that it made him weaker.
Speaker 2: I think he was weak no matter what going into
Speaker 2: that election, but Ted Kennedy's challenge towards him made him
Speaker 2: affirmatively have to make the case to his base and
Speaker 2: to Americans about why he should keep the standard bearer
Speaker 2: of his party.
Speaker 3: So what's your take.
Speaker 5: I think there's two separate questions when it comes to
Speaker 5: Kennedy's influence on Carter's re election. One is the actual
Speaker 5: primary itself, and then second is Kennedy's role after the
Speaker 5: primary in the general election. And I think you're right
Speaker 5: that Carter was made stronger by by that challenge, by
Speaker 5: having to rise to the occasion there and.
Speaker 4: Make the case for himself.
Speaker 5: But then Kennedy by kind of basically not endorsing him
Speaker 5: and not bringing his coalition in behind him, he's very
Speaker 5: sort of endorsed him, but like cold, he gave that
Speaker 5: sty dramatic and he gave this like tear jerking speech
Speaker 5: at the convention where it's like the the you know,
Speaker 5: the you know this guy killed all the puppies, but
Speaker 5: the dream will never die, Like, so vote for the
Speaker 5: dream killer, yes, because one day in the future the
Speaker 5: dream will rise again. It was like a brutal like
Speaker 5: you couldn't watch Kennedy's acceptance speech and come away if
Speaker 5: you're a Kennedy's supporter anything but hating Jimmy.
Speaker 3: Carter, Like how could you kill this wonderful man in
Speaker 3: his movement?
Speaker 5: So if he had, and this is you'll hear the
Speaker 5: exact same thing from Hillary Clinton that it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 5: the Bernie Sanders primary.
Speaker 4: It was the fact that instead.
Speaker 5: Of dropping out in March April May like he did
Speaker 5: when he endorsed Biden, he didn't drop out until the
Speaker 5: convention and very you know, they will say he like
Speaker 5: only luke warmly endorsed. I think that part is BS,
Speaker 5: but you do. I think Bernie has internalized that. And
Speaker 5: if you watch how he comported himself in twenty twenty ye,
Speaker 5: soon as he dropped out, instantly was like, I'm supporting
Speaker 5: Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: And he writes in his book that he didn't want
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 5: Blamed and we didn't want to do anything that could
Speaker 5: be interpreted as undermining Biden. So if you have a
Speaker 5: primary that then results in the parties coming together, then
Speaker 5: I think it is beneficial to the party. But if
Speaker 5: you have a primary where the winner is kind of
Speaker 5: a jerk to the loser and the loser is like, well,
Speaker 5: then screw you, then it does I think hobble you
Speaker 5: going into the general election.
Speaker 4: That's my take on it.
Speaker 2: I think that's fair, But there's no evidence that you know,
Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy or Mary Anne would even do that.
Speaker 3: By the way, even if they did, I mean they don't.
Speaker 2: You don't owe it to anyone, right, it's like to
Speaker 2: endorse them they ultimately to be fair.
Speaker 3: Also to Kennedy, it's not like Carter was all that
Speaker 3: nice to.
Speaker 4: Him, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: It was a huge prick exactly.
Speaker 5: And egos get so deeply involved this, Like Carter needed
Speaker 5: to Carter didn't do what he needed to do to
Speaker 5: pull Kennedy in. Everybody's got responsibilities and duties and obligations
Speaker 5: and nobody met them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if anyone's interested, I read Jonathan Alter's biography
Speaker 2: of Jimmy Carter is actually fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's called his very best. Highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not usually a figure you would spend eight hundred
Speaker 2: pages on, but you learn a lot about the guy
Speaker 2: our only engineering president, which you know is actually kind
Speaker 2: of revealing if you asked me. Let's go to the
Speaker 2: next one here. Very interesting what happened with the Proud Boys.
Speaker 2: You wanted to make sure that we got into the
Speaker 2: verdict that came down, which genuinely is historic, as we
Speaker 2: had laid out here previously, both on the Oath Keepers
Speaker 2: and on the Proud Boys, who were charged with seditious conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Seditious conspiracy is a very very difficult charge to prove.
Speaker 2: The last time that the FBI had brought that case
Speaker 2: in it's like a domestic terrorism incident in the two thousands,
Speaker 2: they actually lost quite handily. So Chrystal and I were
Speaker 2: very skeptical that the jury was going to be able
Speaker 2: to find these claims credible. Ultimately, though the FBI and
Speaker 2: the DOJ, the Biden Justice Department prevailed in this case.
Speaker 2: I think it's worth spending a little bit of time
Speaker 2: on one happened there. So let's gohead and put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. This is the release from
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice. They say that during the district
Speaker 2: returned guilty verdicts multiple felonies against five members of the
Speaker 2: Proud Boys, finding four of the defendants guilty of seditious
Speaker 2: conspiracy for their actions before and during the breach of
Speaker 2: the US Capitol on January sixth. Here was the case,
Speaker 2: basically that the DOJ laid out. The defendants plotted to
Speaker 2: oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power to
Speaker 2: prevent members of Congress and the federal law enforcement officers
Speaker 2: to help protect them from discharge their duties. One of
Speaker 2: them in Rico Tario, Or of Miami, the former chairman
Speaker 2: of the Proud Boys.
Speaker 3: They list the rest of.
Speaker 2: The defendants were guilty then of seditious conspiracy and the
Speaker 2: obstruct conspiracy to obstruct in official proceeding. Now, I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting, Ryan, and I know that you have some
Speaker 2: background on this about the way that the seditious conspiracy
Speaker 2: charge was proven. A lot of it rests on text
Speaker 2: messages that were actually sent by Tario to the rest
Speaker 2: of the Proud Boys about what they were entering in
Speaker 2: Now around the jury and the way that they arrived
Speaker 2: at this. There was actually a fascinating interview with the
Speaker 2: jury members in vice and one of them flagged to me,
Speaker 2: now I'm not questioning the jury.
Speaker 3: I'm literally just using their own.
Speaker 2: Words about how they ended up at this charge to
Speaker 2: put us up there on the screen, they say, what
Speaker 2: evidence convinced you that the Proud Boys had entered into
Speaker 2: conspicuous and seditious conspiracy. Here is exactly what they said verbatim.
Speaker 2: It was all the all the chats, parlor telegram, not
Speaker 2: just the chats but also the private text. I think
Speaker 2: what it boiled down to what they had to say
Speaker 2: prior to jan six, and the fact that they had
Speaker 2: something wanted to do something in secret, and that's why
Speaker 2: the government couldn't present too much evidence that they had
Speaker 2: already deleted because it was unrecoverable.
Speaker 3: So they didn't definitely want people to know.
Speaker 2: They didn't want everybody to know the plan the Proud
Speaker 2: Boys because then I guess it would have gotten out,
Speaker 2: and they didn't want it to get out.
Speaker 3: What did you make of this? Ryan?
Speaker 2: A lot of people who are civil libertarians and picked
Speaker 2: up on this to say, well, you're basically saying that
Speaker 2: the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence. Donald
Speaker 2: Rumse quote see what I'm going for there, and convicted
Speaker 2: them on statistics conspiracy based on this that they were
Speaker 2: trying to cover it up. Obviously, it doesn't make it
Speaker 2: look good, but it also isn't necessarily the direct evidence,
Speaker 2: at least in the way that many civil libertarians are
Speaker 2: looking at it for why this should have been charged.
Speaker 2: Once again, the jury can do what it likes, and
Speaker 2: it didn't reach this decision. We're just here talking about it.
Speaker 2: It's a deeply, deeply disturbing rationale. Yeah, to say that, well, if.
Speaker 5: You were trying to maintain your privacy, that there must
Speaker 5: be some reason like that.
Speaker 6: Is that.
Speaker 3: That's why I was worried about it.
Speaker 5: It's so antithetical to American values. But I think what
Speaker 5: you also saw later in that interview is this clash
Speaker 5: of two American values. One was the sanctity of the
Speaker 5: free elections and the peaceful transfer of power. And she
Speaker 5: says in that interview, we wanted to send a message
Speaker 5: that this is not okay, that if you do this,
Speaker 5: you'll be punished, to that nobody in the future ever
Speaker 5: does that. And they were willing to bend that fundamental
Speaker 5: kind of bedrock American principle that the government has to
Speaker 5: present evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 5: and that juries in the past have been have been
Speaker 5: proud to say, we're conflicted about say this not guilty verdict,
Speaker 5: But it is the responsibility of us as citizens to
Speaker 5: force the government to bring forward evidence even if we
Speaker 5: feel like in our guts the person is guilty, they
Speaker 5: didn't make they didn't make the case, and so therefore
Speaker 5: we're going to rule this person not guilty because that's
Speaker 5: how our American system of criminal justice works. And here
Speaker 5: they kind of, according to her, are discarding that and saying, well,
Speaker 5: they probably did it. And the fact that they deleted
Speaker 5: all these messages suggests to us very strongly.
Speaker 4: That they did it.
Speaker 5: And it's more important for us to air on the
Speaker 5: side of punishing them so that nobody tries to bust
Speaker 5: up an election again.
Speaker 2: And I don't want people to accuse us of cherry
Speaker 2: piking this interview. She literally said this. They said, did
Speaker 2: it matter that there were significant amounts of messages deleted quote,
Speaker 2: It showed an absence of evidence of standing down. No
Speaker 2: one says, no, don't do this, We're not going to
Speaker 2: do this. There was none of that, and that was
Speaker 2: probably because they never said it. The things that were
Speaker 2: affirming that were going to be violent. They just kind
Speaker 2: of let it happen. They point to one of the
Speaker 2: defendants was actually acquitted on conspiracy and they ask for
Speaker 2: the difference, and they say, well, he wasn't in leadership
Speaker 2: and he only joined the Proud Boys in November or
Speaker 2: December of twenty twenty, so we didn't have a whole
Speaker 2: lot time pre January sixth. They have different tiers that
Speaker 2: they were talking about. We actually deadlocked on one of
Speaker 2: the defendants at first got through that and said not guilty.
Speaker 2: Another factor was that he wasn't the brightest bulb on
Speaker 2: the porch. It may not have been bright enough to
Speaker 2: really know about the plan. So I said, well, poor guy,
Speaker 2: he should have listened to his father in law who
Speaker 2: told him don't go. Pretty much everybody should listened to
Speaker 2: their father in law or anybody else had told them
Speaker 2: not to go. Because now these guys are facing some serious,
Speaker 2: serious jail time, and let's go ahead and put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. The Associated Press actually did
Speaker 2: a decent explainer here, and again I want to just
Speaker 2: reiterate why are we spending time on the conspiracy charge?
Speaker 2: This is one of the rarest charges and very very
Speaker 2: tough ones for governments to be able to prove. I mean, historically,
Speaker 2: most juries have rejected it in the past when the
Speaker 2: US government brought this, even in cases of major domestic terrorism.
Speaker 3: So just keep that in mind.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is it was intended for basically
Speaker 2: extremists and others like in the post Civil War era.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can imagine the context of what happened.
Speaker 2: What they associated press and all of that point out
Speaker 2: is that this post Civil War war law was to
Speaker 2: arrest Southerners who were still fighting the US government, very
Speaker 2: rare in modern American history. What they basically said is
Speaker 2: that they had to prove beyond a shadow of a
Speaker 2: doubt that this was a conspiracy not just to storm
Speaker 2: the Capitol, but explicitly to block the transfer of power
Speaker 2: from Trump to Biden. Now, as I've pointed out prere previously,
Speaker 2: outside of the recent January sixth cases, the previous ones
Speaker 2: that were brought in government did and all came to
Speaker 2: aquittical acquittals. That was in twenty twelve in against that
Speaker 2: so called like Hate group because they said that prosecutors
Speaker 2: relied at that time specifically only on hateful diet tribes
Speaker 2: against the First Amendment and didn't actually prove, as required
Speaker 2: by the law, that they ever had detailed plans for rebellions.
Speaker 2: And so the reason why we're spending time on the
Speaker 2: detailed plans is that the detailed plans and their government's
Speaker 2: ability to prove those detailed plans are at the heart
Speaker 2: of a successful conspiracious conspiracy charge under the statute into
Speaker 2: the US federal law.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so often when you're debating the questions of
Speaker 5: these of these political crimes, there is a crime that
Speaker 5: underlies it where you don't even need this extra political
Speaker 5: crime in there. So in other words, like did a
Speaker 5: bunch of these guys Notreo because he was already underarrest, but.
Speaker 2: Well and maybe maybe a FED yeah not maybe it
Speaker 2: genuinely was a federal informat, which is kind of wild
Speaker 2: because he still got convicted.
Speaker 5: And anyway, right, what's the point of having all these
Speaker 5: performance you can't stop this.
Speaker 3: What's the point of being a FED if the FEDS
Speaker 3: is still going to charge?
Speaker 5: There is also that Yeah, uh so these guys did
Speaker 5: sack the capital, and they did do so with the
Speaker 5: intents of blocking this transfer of power, like blocking this proceeding.
Speaker 4: So you've got you've.
Speaker 3: Got them on that charge serpiracy to obstruct, charge.
Speaker 5: Him with that and lock him up for that, Like, great,
Speaker 5: if you're going to then you know, pile on.
Speaker 4: The extra political charges.
Speaker 5: I feel like you really do need to have the
Speaker 5: evidence to back that up. And if they deleted it
Speaker 5: before you could get it, then you know that's too
Speaker 5: bad for the prosecutors. So there, and this is it's
Speaker 5: so often the case that you already have like the
Speaker 5: law in place that you need, but it's that people
Speaker 5: just want more. And so like I forget where I
Speaker 5: was reading this, but after John Brown rated Harper's ferry, yes,
Speaker 5: that's right, Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Senator Lincoln Douglas debates
Speaker 5: who said we need tougher laws, So you don't need
Speaker 5: tougher laws.
Speaker 4: He killed people.
Speaker 5: You've got him like he led an insurrection. Now to me,
Speaker 5: good for him, and he's a hero.
Speaker 2: Well, the reason Stephen Douglass and all of them did
Speaker 2: that is because Brown became a political symbol of rebellion
Speaker 2: across the world. He like ignited the flame and all that,
Speaker 2: and not only across the world, but obviously in the North.
Speaker 2: Prior to that, the idea of armed rebellion or slavery
Speaker 2: was basically unthinkable, and it also spawned. It was like
Speaker 2: the it's kind of like people who pray for disaster.
Speaker 2: The Southerners, they're called fire eaders at the time, people
Speaker 2: who wanted to break away from the Union.
Speaker 3: They were like, Brown was.
Speaker 2: Everything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams about
Speaker 2: what the North really wanted.
Speaker 3: To do to them. Yea.
Speaker 5: And even Lincoln was like, look, we hanged the guy,
Speaker 5: Yeah we can. He has some court with it. We
Speaker 5: could hang him ten times, right, and they wouldn't be satisfied.
Speaker 5: So Douglas is like, well, how about more laws, and
Speaker 5: you can. It's the exact same political system, like that's
Speaker 5: what happened to that you'd have people just proposing new
Speaker 5: laws because hanging him once, you know, isn't enough to
Speaker 5: satisfy that the table news punts of the time.
Speaker 2: The reason why this is an important point is you
Speaker 2: can't fix what happened on January sixth in the law.
Speaker 2: It's not a law question, it's a political question. It's
Speaker 2: a question of political legitimacy. Of Biden, of Trump, of
Speaker 2: Trump questioning the democratic process, of the democratic will of
Speaker 2: the people and who they elect, and whether Republicans still
Speaker 2: choose him as a leader, even post that these are
Speaker 2: all cultural political questions that can only be resolved through
Speaker 2: the democratic process. You cannot legal your way out of
Speaker 2: John Brown of January.
Speaker 3: I'm not comparing the two. They are not in any
Speaker 3: way somewhere.
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is just that these big, you know,
Speaker 2: events like this are not matters of we need new
Speaker 2: laws to make sure this doesn't happen. By the way,
Speaker 2: they did have new laws through the dread Scott decision
Speaker 2: and all of that, or you know, and all of
Speaker 2: the eventual political compromises that were made through law to
Speaker 2: try and prevent the Civil War, and it didn't work
Speaker 2: because it was.
Speaker 3: Not a question of law. It was a question of human.
Speaker 2: Dignity, of power, of slavery, and all of that that
Speaker 2: eventually resulted in, you know, a clash of wills and
Speaker 2: of arms that had to be where one side had
Speaker 2: to be subjugated.
Speaker 3: I hope we don't come to that. I pray that
Speaker 3: we don't.
Speaker 2: But the point is that we can only solve this
Speaker 2: through means, you know, way way above the law, at
Speaker 2: least just in my opinion.
Speaker 5: Right, And it's not as if John Brown. If Stephen
Speaker 5: Douglas had written the Sedition Act before that would be like, well,
Speaker 5: then I'm not going to go.
Speaker 3: For Harper's Ferriss. That's the thing too about Brown.
Speaker 2: Brown actually rejected all the compromises you know that I'm
Speaker 2: talking about. He thought that they were whims and that they,
Speaker 2: you know, weren't you're.
Speaker 4: Against there's no I mean, it's kind.
Speaker 3: Of like that Luis c. K joke.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, the abortion protesters, they think there's murder
Speaker 2: going on in there.
Speaker 3: He's like, what would you do if?
Speaker 2: And I was like, you know, I think that actually
Speaker 2: coded for liberals. The way that many pro life people
Speaker 2: who I've met as well, the way they think about
Speaker 2: this is it's always just important to get in the
Speaker 2: mind of somebody that you don't understand as to why
Speaker 2: this matters now seditious conspiracy versus just the obstructing a government.
Speaker 2: Preceding that a lot of the other Jan sixers have
Speaker 2: been convicted on. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: The leader of the Oath Keepers is now facing possibly
Speaker 2: twenty five years in federal prison. Stuart Rhodes was convicted
Speaker 2: already of seditious conspiracy, where they were I think more
Speaker 2: easily able to prove the detailed plot, although even there again,
Speaker 2: you know, it all comes back to whether it was
Speaker 2: a genuine plot to actually stop the transfer of power
Speaker 2: versus a riot, which is basically what the defense said
Speaker 2: there at trial they painted him as a terrorist. Now
Speaker 2: they are saying, quote that a harsh sentence is critical
Speaker 2: to deter political violence, and they said that what Rhodes
Speaker 2: beliefs has done. They wrote that Rhodes believes he has
Speaker 2: done nothing wrong and still presents a threat to American
Speaker 2: democracy and to American lives should he not receive the
Speaker 2: twenty five year sentence. So that's why again it's important,
Speaker 2: is because you know sitious conspiracy. You I mean, theoretically
Speaker 2: you could spend your life in prison after being convicted
Speaker 2: of this charge.
Speaker 5: Right, and in the old days you behave you would yeah,
Speaker 5: like you've come for the king.
Speaker 3: Its justice for that you come for the.
Speaker 4: King and you miss yes.
Speaker 5: So you know, a lot of me has not a
Speaker 5: lot of sympathy because of that rationale that everybody knows
Speaker 5: that if you come for the king and you miss
Speaker 5: or what are your best nonsense? And they missed yes,
Speaker 5: So you know they aft around, and this is the fining,
Speaker 5: this is the finding out period.
Speaker 2: Usually it's just me quoting Omar from the wire here.
Speaker 2: So it's good to have another wire guy here.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so, but these extremely long sentences, I think
Speaker 5: we don't we don't realize how kind of out of
Speaker 5: the kind of civilized world we've gotten. Up until the
Speaker 5: early part of the twentieth century, it was extremely rare
Speaker 5: for people to get even ten year sentences. Now, some
Speaker 5: of that was because you were much more likely to
Speaker 5: get capital punishment for murder and then everything else underneath
Speaker 5: that shorter sentences. You probably know this when when Stalin
Speaker 5: moved from kind of typical ten year they call it
Speaker 5: tenors ten year sentences to twenty five year sentences.
Speaker 3: The entire globe was.
Speaker 5: Shocked, like, you're giving twenty five year sentences out like
Speaker 5: this is Barbara.
Speaker 3: That was during the purges in the nineteen right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so this is not that long ago that the
Speaker 5: entire world considered twenty five year sentences to be completely barbed.
Speaker 3: The expectancy what lower that's true.
Speaker 5: Those life sentences, Yeah, especially in the Rush at the time.
Speaker 5: But now they're dropping twenty five year sentences all over
Speaker 5: the place. So and a lot of people did a
Speaker 5: lot less than him, serving more time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that actually very true anyway, So keep that in
Speaker 2: mind as we're thinking about this. There's always what we
Speaker 2: always try to do here is bring you know, this
Speaker 2: isn't there's no defense of the crowd was to be
Speaker 2: saying the same thing or whatever if it was some
Speaker 2: like the you know what was a good example is
Speaker 2: the weathermen. You know, the weathermen bombers.
Speaker 4: They don't need twenty five years.
Speaker 2: You guys want to know why the weathermen didn't didn't
Speaker 2: ever serve even though they literally bombed the Capitol. I
Speaker 2: think people forget that, you know why, because the FBI
Speaker 2: was illegally spying on them, and we easily could have
Speaker 2: convicted every single one of them for life, for even
Speaker 2: for murder. In some cases, some of them were convicted,
Speaker 2: but they weren't because j Edgar Hoover and others violated
Speaker 2: their civil liberties. And the determination was made because their
Speaker 2: civil liberties were violated. Even though these people genuinely did
Speaker 2: commit acts of domestic terrorism and wanted a violent insurrection
Speaker 2: against the US government, that's still the principle had to
Speaker 2: hold within US law. That civil liberties and violations by
Speaker 2: the state shall not trump the ability to go after them.
Speaker 3: Same with Elsberg. They would have gotten him right.
Speaker 2: The only reason he got off is because the Nickson
Speaker 2: administration spied on him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is incredible.
Speaker 2: So always keep that in mind whenever we're thinking about
Speaker 2: these things. Okay, let's go to the next one. Just
Speaker 2: such a tragic event happening on the New York City subway.
Speaker 3: Lots of discourse around this.
Speaker 2: Jordan Neely, he was a Michael Jackson impersonator at one time.
Speaker 2: There was an altercation on the subway. Now we don't
Speaker 2: know a lot of the details. There's conflicting things that
Speaker 2: are coming from the witnesses. What we do know is
Speaker 2: this mister Neely was very terribly mentally disturbed. He was
Speaker 2: a mentally ill person who was on the New York
Speaker 2: City Subway who at some point lost his composure while
Speaker 2: he was there, either asking for money or violently threatening passengers.
Speaker 2: That's what some people are saying. Other people are saying
Speaker 2: he didn't violently threaten. Eventually he was restrained by a
Speaker 2: man named Daniel Penny, who was on the New York
Speaker 2: City Subway. Penny maintains that he was protecting himself and
Speaker 2: others whenever he put miss Neely into a chokehold. Eventually
Speaker 2: he was held nearly not only by Daniel Penny, but
Speaker 2: by two other bystanders who were there as Neely was
Speaker 2: trying to free himself after fifteen minutes of being held
Speaker 2: there and they were trying to alert police officers. He
Speaker 2: eventually died as a result, probably from restriction of his airway. So, anyway,
Speaker 2: lots of discourse around self defense, should these mentally people
Speaker 2: even be there? How exactly should we deal with this
Speaker 2: in the future, And the overwhelming consensus I think Ryan
Speaker 2: from a lot of outside of the self defense is like, okay,
Speaker 2: I think we can all agree it is menacing to
Speaker 2: have like mentally ill vagrance like all over cities. Then
Speaker 2: the question comes, it's dangerous. There's a woman here in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. I forget her name, who was stabbed to
Speaker 2: death randomly. This is fairly or sorry has become fairly
Speaker 2: noticeable basically.
Speaker 3: Across all urban areas.
Speaker 2: I've traveled basically all across the country in the last
Speaker 2: couple of years, and I've noticed from lot I mean,
Speaker 2: I was still never forget personally skid Row skid rows
Speaker 2: who were probably the worst thing I have ever seen.
Speaker 3: I've been to.
Speaker 2: I have seen people missing limbs in Cambodia, street slums
Speaker 2: in Bombay, and I'm telling you, I really think skid
Speaker 2: row might be one of the most one of the
Speaker 2: saddest things I've ever seen, like a genuine human tragedy.
Speaker 2: But skid Row Los Angeles, San Francisco, of course is famous,
Speaker 2: but they're not the only ones. You know, go on
Speaker 2: down by the lake in Austin home there were homeless encampus,
Speaker 2: at least there for a time. Here in Washington. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you and I have noticed this. I've noticed it
Speaker 2: basically everywhere.
Speaker 4: So this is.
Speaker 2: Becoming a metropolitan problem generally for America. Whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to the question of mental health, the idea comes of
Speaker 2: we need more mental health resources. And the presumption for
Speaker 2: mister Neely was that there were no mental health resources.
Speaker 2: But here is the crazy part, and this is why
Speaker 2: I think it's a discourse breaker. He was well known
Speaker 2: to New York City home advocate authorities. Put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. Not only had he been arrested
Speaker 2: over forty times and released, but outreach actually outreach workers
Speaker 2: in New York City said he was on the Top
Speaker 2: fifty list, which is a roster maintained by the city
Speaker 2: of homeless people who were living on the streets, whom
Speaker 2: officials consider most urgently in the need of assistance and
Speaker 2: of treatment. And the reason why I think this is
Speaker 2: a discourse breaker is that not only was he on
Speaker 2: the top fifty I guess worst you know, homeless people
Speaker 2: list or whatever for New York City, he was taken
Speaker 2: to hospitals numerous times, both voluntarily and involuntarily. So then
Speaker 2: the question comes to this, you have a person who's
Speaker 2: been arrested forty times or so, well known to police.
Speaker 2: Now we can agree, you know, it's inhumane to throw
Speaker 2: mentally ill people in prison where they're obviously not going
Speaker 2: to be rehabilitated. So then it comes to the question of, well,
Speaker 2: how do mental health authorities rehabilitate or even frankly, just
Speaker 2: deal with people who are this mentally ill. But we
Speaker 2: have to balance that with civil liberties, with the fact
Speaker 2: is Neally is an American citizen. I've talked a lot
Speaker 2: here about part of my objection to some red flag
Speaker 2: laws is, you know, basically it's like a quasi depriving
Speaker 2: you of your constitutional right through a legalistic process where
Speaker 2: you haven't actually done anything.
Speaker 3: You haven't actually committed a crime yet, and even when.
Speaker 2: You do commit crimes like we have, you know, sentences
Speaker 2: laid out and all of that for a reason.
Speaker 3: So I don't really know what to make of this.
Speaker 4: Ryan.
Speaker 2: It is clear here that mental he had mental health resources,
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, oh, we do need mental health. Look,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're on a list and you've been
Speaker 2: arrested world the forty time, the city knows who you are,
Speaker 2: but they even involuntarily had committed him. And then it's
Speaker 2: a question of like, well, should we have post like
Speaker 2: lifetime involuntary commitment. That's the system we moved away from
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties, you know, specifically to balance civil
Speaker 2: liberty concerns but also funding. And there's a lot of
Speaker 2: questions about that. So I don't know what to make
Speaker 2: of this. I'm curious.
Speaker 5: And then the question is he's like what does the
Speaker 5: commitment look like? Because the Times writes about how nearly
Speaker 5: most of his arrests were the nuisance things that are
Speaker 5: like associated with homelessness.
Speaker 4: You're anything in public jumping.
Speaker 3: The style which we've all seen if you have ever
Speaker 3: been in yours.
Speaker 5: But then there was one maybe a year or two
Speaker 5: ago or so, where he punched a woman in the
Speaker 5: face broker nose, caused a lot of damage to her,
Speaker 5: was arrested, charged with a felony for this, and as
Speaker 5: they worked out a plea deal where he would agree
Speaker 5: to commit himself basically take his medication, enter into this
Speaker 5: particular program trying to get his life back on track.
Speaker 5: The judges, he and the judge and the prosecutor and
Speaker 5: defense turning, everybody works this out and he only lasted
Speaker 5: a few days and he kind of slips out. So
Speaker 5: then the question is what do you have to do
Speaker 5: when it comes to security at these mental healthes just
Speaker 5: because if you are and then are you in prison?
Speaker 5: Because like a hospital setting is not a prison. Yet
Speaker 5: he's he's committed to go to this setting. He needs,
Speaker 5: you know, he needs it. He understands in his kind
Speaker 5: of lucid moments that he needs it. Uh, and it
Speaker 5: is preferable to the alternative, which is the conviction for
Speaker 5: the felony and getting sent away to prison.
Speaker 4: That's that doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: But then but then he just walks out and then
Speaker 5: police encountered him multiple times. After the Times article is
Speaker 5: really worth reading, I wrote, people.
Speaker 3: Realise this is again we are not trying to get
Speaker 3: into like.
Speaker 4: Oh, should should you defend people?
Speaker 3: When you're should you even be in.
Speaker 2: The situation where like, hey, everyone agrees we should have
Speaker 2: more resources, How do we balance resources with civil liberty concerns?
Speaker 3: I have no answer. I actually don't have an answer.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is. I could only look
Speaker 3: at this one and be like, wow, what a tragedy.
Speaker 5: Man and one Yeah, there were multiple failures where officers
Speaker 5: were called because he was at one time he's peeing
Speaker 5: in the Coney Island end of the subway, another time
Speaker 5: he was doing something else that brought cops out. And
Speaker 5: none of those times were they able to link the
Speaker 5: fact that he had this warrant.
Speaker 3: Out right well to the fact and ID, yeah, it's right,
Speaker 3: but they also know who he is like at this point, right.
Speaker 5: But it is interesting when you think about this top
Speaker 5: fifty list because as.
Speaker 3: We know that in every universe, a very.
Speaker 5: Small number of people are responsible for a huge amount
Speaker 5: of things. That's actually comments on a YouTube page or
Speaker 5: whether you know exactly yeah.
Speaker 2: It reminded me of shoplifters in New York. I gotta
Speaker 2: find this. Yes, a tiny number of shoplifters commit thousands
Speaker 2: of New York City steff So nearly one third of
Speaker 2: all shoplifting arrests in the city last year involved just
Speaker 2: three hundred and twenty seven people. That I think genuinely
Speaker 2: is a question of just lock them up, because I
Speaker 2: don't think that those people are Maybe they are mentally
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe they have some like shoplifting disease,
Speaker 2: but that possibly could come to prosecutorial discretion. I'm curious
Speaker 2: what you think, I know, your criminal justice reform advocate,
Speaker 2: how do you deal with something like this?
Speaker 5: So there was a rise in this idea of swift
Speaker 5: and certain punishment along with the criminal justice reform movement
Speaker 5: that I think is still getting implemented in some places,
Speaker 5: but it lost a little favor in the kind of
Speaker 5: face of the rise of abolition, which runs counter to it.
Speaker 5: But basically, what swift and certain means is that too
Speaker 5: often people who are in the criminal justice system don't
Speaker 5: have any certainty about what their punishment is going to be,
Speaker 5: and they wait forever to find out what it's going
Speaker 5: to be And so if you get caught shoplifting, you
Speaker 5: may get no penalty at all. It might take five
Speaker 5: years for them to run you through the system, or
Speaker 5: you might wind up getting some weird judge.
Speaker 4: It gives you, like, you.
Speaker 5: Know, three years if you're over like a felonious like
Speaker 5: level of theft. And they say, what that does to
Speaker 5: people is that they then they just take their chances, yes,
Speaker 5: because I know the gamble at that point is to
Speaker 5: not worry about the consequences. What swift and certain means
Speaker 5: is that if you commit the crime, or you violate
Speaker 5: probation or parole, the punishment is going to be like immediate,
Speaker 5: like you're doing a weekend. You're going and it's always
Speaker 5: going to happen. You don't have like there's no question
Speaker 5: about it. And so as you're thinking through your decision
Speaker 5: matrix that is in your mind, but it also then
Speaker 5: is much shorter, like the idea is like you're only
Speaker 5: going to do a weekend, And the idea is that
Speaker 5: people don't want to go to prison period. Now, some
Speaker 5: people who are so far gone, like nearly who were
Speaker 5: like in the throes of a mental health crisis, like
Speaker 5: I don't care if they send me to rikers. I
Speaker 5: don't like, I'm so miserable, so like out of it
Speaker 5: at this.
Speaker 4: Point those there.
Speaker 5: I think we deinstitutionalize our mental health a response in
Speaker 5: over the last like twenty years, and I think the
Speaker 5: pendulum swung so far that now there is really a gap.
Speaker 5: Like if you have ever tried to get somebody into treatment,
Speaker 5: what you'll find calling around is there just aren't beds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is the one where I have Again,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to solve it because you're pointing
Speaker 2: out a very important point about beds in hospital capacity.
Speaker 2: Because we have an insane healthcare system, mental health beds
Speaker 2: are very limited.
Speaker 3: Do you want to know why.
Speaker 2: There's no profit? There ain't no profit in mental health,
Speaker 2: so we have.
Speaker 4: They're uninsured people.
Speaker 2: For the most part, we had tons of ICUs because
Speaker 2: we can print money off people with ICU who are
Speaker 2: in the or like critical health or kidney disease, whatever,
Speaker 2: heart disease, any of that. Those are very very profitable industries,
Speaker 2: but there's basically no money recurring revenue, especially in mentally ills.
Speaker 2: So when the de institutionalization movement happened, we basically kicked
Speaker 2: it to a private quasi public private healthcare system which
Speaker 2: increased funding cuts. Obamacare has a role in this as well.
Speaker 2: Even though people have coverage, the vast majority of people
Speaker 2: who need them don't have coverage. And then it comes
Speaker 2: a question of like Medicaid reimbursement, which the rate is
Speaker 2: very low, so a lot of doctors don't want to
Speaker 2: be involved, so it gets kicked to this basically catch
Speaker 2: and release type program for a lot of mentally ill
Speaker 2: homeless people.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think about the institutionalization movement, and on
Speaker 2: the one hand, obviously it had some benefits, like you know,
Speaker 2: people like Neely and all of those. It would be institutionalized,
Speaker 2: it would be health cared for by the state. Basically
Speaker 2: the public menace would be would be balanced with him
Speaker 2: hopefully getting the best care possible in someone like with
Speaker 2: that condition.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, how many.
Speaker 2: Stories you read from the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: of there like this woman.
Speaker 3: Wants a job, We got an institutionalizer, and you're like, wait,
Speaker 3: what what's happening here?
Speaker 2: You know, so she's got new fangled ideas about voting
Speaker 2: this These are real stories. I'm not joking about the
Speaker 2: way that the institutionalization was actually weaponized as a tool
Speaker 2: of political repression, so that actually I'm trying to think.
Speaker 2: It's like Sherman, we were just talking about the Civil War.
Speaker 2: William To comes to Sherman. They're like, he's lost his
Speaker 2: mind because the thought that the They're like, he's gone
Speaker 2: mad because he was like, no, this war is not
Speaker 2: going to be swift, It'll actually be very long and terrible.
Speaker 2: He literally thought he'd lost his mind as a result
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh, make sure it's terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So the point is is that I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how you bounce those two things.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking though.
Speaker 2: Looking at this is probably got to get back to
Speaker 2: some level of institutionalization. I mean, I'm really at a
Speaker 2: point now where I've been taking the Schellenberger pill for
Speaker 2: people who and you don't like Shellenberger, but I do.
Speaker 4: I read.
Speaker 2: I think San Francisco, Sicico is the best possible policy
Speaker 2: solution yet that I have seen around this entire thing,
Speaker 2: which is we should acknowledge a couple of things.
Speaker 3: We have a mental health crisis.
Speaker 2: We have a mental health crisis, which is compounded by
Speaker 2: drug use, specifically fentanyl, which is leading to mass death
Speaker 2: amongst a lot of people. The answer, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: is that over criminalization clearly is not working.
Speaker 3: It's just not the answer.
Speaker 2: Also, though it is deeply inhumane to let people just
Speaker 2: get shoot up on the streets and two are raping
Speaker 2: and killing each other as a reference in skid Row,
Speaker 2: the answer has to be some level of effectively involuntary commitment.
Speaker 2: We're like, look, we're not going to lock you up,
Speaker 2: but you are going to rehab and you're going there
Speaker 2: for a long time, and you it's basically the Portugal
Speaker 2: model of drugs are not legal, but try shooting up
Speaker 2: in a park and Lisbon.
Speaker 3: It's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: The cops are going to be like, all right, you're
Speaker 2: going to prison or you're going to rehab.
Speaker 3: You have no choice, and we have to. The way
Speaker 3: I've heard it described.
Speaker 2: Is you need paternalistic paternalistic libertarianism here where it's like
Speaker 2: you are free to do what you want within the
Speaker 2: bounds of not being a public menace. But once you
Speaker 2: cross that threshold, there are swift and clear consequences.
Speaker 5: As you were saying, yeah, because you also have to
Speaker 5: realize that the people who are in those crisis situations
Speaker 5: are not They're not happy, they're not living meaningful. Oh god,
Speaker 5: nowt White Underbelloid channel. It's dangerous right to them, it's
Speaker 5: dangerous to others. Very and so yeah, I do think
Speaker 5: you like portrait. I think Portugal is a really interesting model.
Speaker 5: You know, to think about that, if you've gotten to
Speaker 5: a place where you're regularly basically out in out in public,
Speaker 5: you probably have gone too far.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and are not in a place that is
Speaker 3: making you contented either.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, I mean, I mean that that was really
Speaker 2: the saddest part. I recommend it. Just reference it. The
Speaker 2: soft White Underbelly channel. Mark Leida has done a fantastic
Speaker 2: job of I watched that and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is not really like I'm like, to the extent
Speaker 2: this is a mental health problem, like these people are
Speaker 2: just drug addicts. Like, and I'm not saying that in
Speaker 2: a derogatory where I'm like, these people are hardcore drug addicts. Well,
Speaker 2: to which the more fascinating thing actually was listening to
Speaker 2: interviews of people who are diagnosed mentally ill and who
Speaker 2: talk about how the drugs make it ten times worse.
Speaker 2: I listened to a guy with schizophrenia and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: whenever I'm not on drugs, i'm schizophrenia. It's like more
Speaker 2: the hallucinations and the vivid like ideas in your head
Speaker 2: are not as dangerous where he's like when you pair
Speaker 2: it with speed, He's like, it makes it literally made
Speaker 2: me commit murder or not murder, like an assault. And
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, Like, you know, the compounding nature
Speaker 2: of these two things is actually probably what produces the
Speaker 2: most dangerous people you know in society.
Speaker 4: And people in those situations.
Speaker 5: I'll say, it's not as if I can decide tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: Let's say you could kick your habit and determine that
Speaker 5: you are going to turn yourself around, get a job,
Speaker 5: and get housing. It's not you can't get a job
Speaker 5: because of the record that you've racked up over the
Speaker 5: years and housing. People with jobs are having a hard
Speaker 5: time getting housing.
Speaker 4: So unless we.
Speaker 3: Create an actual pathway for people.
Speaker 5: Out of that situation that is credible to them, and
Speaker 5: because right now there isn't one, like you can't lie
Speaker 5: to them and claim that there's some way to turn
Speaker 5: this around.
Speaker 4: Then to them, the rational.
Speaker 5: Thing is just to be stay in this cul de
Speaker 5: sack of misery.
Speaker 3: Look, I mean many of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, unfortunately are making the rational choice
Speaker 2: if you do want to support your drug addiction. It's
Speaker 2: just you know, turned downtown Los Angeles not only into
Speaker 2: a hell hole. And I don't mean it again in
Speaker 2: terms of like, well, you know, just get rid of
Speaker 2: all of them. I'm like watching this, I don't know
Speaker 2: that one really scarred me. I'll tell you I've seen
Speaker 2: some bad stuff, and that one that is still one
Speaker 2: of the worst things I've ever seen. Let's talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about Hunter Biden. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. Prosecutors are currently near
Speaker 2: a charging decision in the Hunter Biden case. Now I
Speaker 2: find this a little bit of a ridiculous leak, Ryan,
Speaker 2: because it's like prosecutors are nearing making a decision.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, make the decision.
Speaker 2: What's the decision, because the decision is the one that matters.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: What has happened is that there was a pivotal meeting
Speaker 2: between the prosecutors and Hunter Biden's lawyers toward the end
Speaker 2: of an investigation. Now people might forget what is the
Speaker 2: end of this investigation, We've heard a lot here about
Speaker 2: a hunter Biden and President Biden. All of it comes
Speaker 2: back to back taxes which he was not allegedly not
Speaker 2: paying and a gun charge. Now, according to the people
Speaker 2: who are familiar with the matter, this has been a
Speaker 2: basically years long investigation that was mounted by the Biden
Speaker 2: Department of Justice. This is actually in the hands of
Speaker 2: the US Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, which is a
Speaker 2: little bit of a conflict of interest because the Biden's
Speaker 2: basically run the state of Delaware. And the question is
Speaker 2: is like, is he going to you know, view this
Speaker 2: case under the letter of the law, which I mean
Speaker 2: it's it's very basic, like what came out from the
Speaker 2: laptop and from what came out from the laptop is
Speaker 2: very clear. He won hundred percent lied on his application
Speaker 2: for around in terms of crime background.
Speaker 3: Check forget laptop.
Speaker 5: His own memoir, Yeah, exactly, like right, the application for
Speaker 5: the weapon says, are you currently basically abusing drugs?
Speaker 2: And he literally we can prove be on a shadow
Speaker 2: of doubt because there's video he was used for when
Speaker 2: he filled it out, Very possible and I'm not you
Speaker 2: know again, I have deep sympathy for him, as we
Speaker 2: were just talking about with the Jordan Neely situation for
Speaker 2: people who find themselves in the midst of that level
Speaker 2: of addiction. But dude, you did lie, and you did
Speaker 2: illegally purchase a firearm.
Speaker 3: There is just no there's.
Speaker 4: No amazing getting around.
Speaker 5: An amazing thing to watch the right rally around charges
Speaker 5: of illegal purchase of a firearm.
Speaker 3: You'd be surprised.
Speaker 2: Actually, a lot of the biggest gun people are advocates
Speaker 2: of strict laws that are already on the books for
Speaker 2: people who are like, we just need to enforce current
Speaker 2: existing law, and a lot of us would be safeer
Speaker 2: around guns, at least from my bros in the two
Speaker 2: A community. The question though, around the taxes is actually
Speaker 2: probably one of the more interesting ones, because the tax
Speaker 2: crimes here relate to unpaid alleged unpaid back taxes around
Speaker 2: quote overseas business ties and consulting work.
Speaker 3: I also don't think Hunter, or many.
Speaker 2: US citizens i've met abroad, realized that if you are
Speaker 2: a US citizen, no matter how much money you make,
Speaker 2: Uncle Sam is going to get their cut, and that
Speaker 2: includes fifty thousand dollars a month or possibly eighty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a month, payments from Ukrainian energy companies or Chinese
Speaker 2: industrial state companies, or your stakes in Chinese investment firms
Speaker 2: which you were sitting on the board of and receiving
Speaker 2: said capital gains.
Speaker 4: Routes, jewelry watching.
Speaker 3: Jewelry laptops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Like, just because somebody gives you something in
Speaker 2: kind doesn't mean that you don't have to pay a
Speaker 2: tax on it. And that is something he may be
Speaker 2: finding here out the hard way, because, as we've already showed,
Speaker 2: he already has his allies point out though, that he
Speaker 2: had to pay the back taxes.
Speaker 3: So he by.
Speaker 2: Paying the two million dollars in unpaid back taxes, he's
Speaker 2: acknowledging I did not pay my taxes. Here is another
Speaker 2: crazy part that I think lot not a lot of
Speaker 2: other people are focusing on. Hunter did not pay this
Speaker 2: two million back taxes with his own money, but he
Speaker 2: did his friend paid his back taxes.
Speaker 3: A quote Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Lawyer and novelist who befriended him in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: So you meet a guy and a year later.
Speaker 2: He pays two million dollars in back I got you,
Speaker 2: And you don't think that that is a massive conflict
Speaker 2: of interest. You think he'd be paying your back taxes
Speaker 2: if you were not the president's son, If Brian, if
Speaker 2: you and I did what this man did were locked up.
Speaker 3: It's not in a question. Irs already came to your door.
Speaker 3: It's over. Your house is gone. Like nobody.
Speaker 2: I have great friends, none of them have two million dollars.
Speaker 2: He's gonna be able to pay my back taxes.
Speaker 3: I would never even put myself in this situation.
Speaker 2: But this is one of those where it just seems
Speaker 2: so clear that if he does not get charged, he's
Speaker 2: getting protected.
Speaker 5: By it in defense of Weiss, the attorney and his
Speaker 5: conflicts of interests. Guy, so there's a Trump holdover. But
Speaker 5: you're right that Delaware. But then then again, what do
Speaker 5: you what are you going to do? Like it's it's Delaware.
Speaker 2: This is literally if anyone's ever been to Delaware, it's
Speaker 2: basically a highway. No offense Delaware and defense intended. Sorry, yeh, offense, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, offensere Delaware. All right, My my future in
Speaker 2: laws went to the University of Delaware. It's complicated anyway,
Speaker 2: there is a The only thing of note, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: is the massive rest stop, which says the Biden.
Speaker 3: The Amtrak Ye Biden station.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they want like five dollars per square mile for.
Speaker 4: You to drive through their state.
Speaker 3: There you go, that's true, so they can have no
Speaker 3: money on the holes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty well.
Speaker 2: Anyway, let's go to the next part here, because Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden's defense legal defense is actually putting Biden in a
Speaker 2: little bit of a hard place.
Speaker 3: To put this up there from Axios.
Speaker 2: They say that aids with President Biden are actually clashing
Speaker 2: with Hunter Biden's teams over his dealing with legal battles
Speaker 2: because Hunter is moving towards creating a legal defense fund
Speaker 2: and hiring ethics advisors. Now, high level Democrats are really
Speaker 2: worried about the idea of the president's son soliciting money
Speaker 2: to pay for his legal troubles. This is another thing
Speaker 2: that I keep coming back to. This guy printed millions
Speaker 2: of dollars off of his dad's name for thirty years
Speaker 2: in public.
Speaker 3: Where did all of the money go? It's the big
Speaker 3: guy had to take a sea. It's like, where is
Speaker 3: all of the money did you?
Speaker 2: How do you spend millions of dollars on crack? I mean,
Speaker 2: is it anything possible? Millions, millions dollars on crack.
Speaker 4: If you're in Vegas, you.
Speaker 3: Can okay, you can plunge that one hundred thousands.
Speaker 2: I would believe millions, like millions of dollars like millions
Speaker 2: of dollars on crack, and European.
Speaker 3: Prostitutes like you're getting bottle service. Maybe're right.
Speaker 2: Obviously I'm a member of the uninitiated. So from what
Speaker 2: we can see here is that they are very worried
Speaker 2: that he will be publicly raising money from who knows,
Speaker 2: maybe people like sketchy Hollywood lawyers who have to have
Speaker 2: two million dollars around paying his legal funds. Basically, what
Speaker 2: it has come to is that Hunter is still very
Speaker 2: upset that he has become a household name. He doesn't
Speaker 2: believe he's being fairly treated, when in reality it's well
Speaker 2: beyond fairness.
Speaker 3: You'd be locked up.
Speaker 2: He would have a twenty you'd have a three strike
Speaker 2: minimum if he wasn't the kid of literally any other
Speaker 2: the president of the United States and a former very
Speaker 2: powerful senator. What it basically comes back to is that
Speaker 2: he is in a real ethics bind because he reportedly
Speaker 2: has quote millions of dollars remaining in legal debt that
Speaker 2: remain on his books, so he would have to use
Speaker 2: and solicit donations, probably from Biden allies to be able
Speaker 2: to pay for all of this. So I just think
Speaker 2: it's a it's a nightmare scenario for President Biden. And also,
Speaker 2: you know, the headline is not going to look so
Speaker 2: great for him. We are nearing the period where they probably.
Speaker 5: Do have to charge him if they are going to
Speaker 5: charge it either way or not charged, like even not
Speaker 5: like not charging is a damaging headline for Biden in
Speaker 5: the same way that Hillary getting not charged right before
Speaker 5: the election was was actually turned out to be damaging
Speaker 5: for her. The attorney that he's talking to that has
Speaker 5: the Biden camp annoyed, Abby loll So, I'm sure you
Speaker 5: know he was. He represented the Kushner's. He's kind of
Speaker 5: a brass knuckles kind of guy, and the Biden team
Speaker 5: is like, let's let's keep this out of the headlines
Speaker 5: and keep this chill.
Speaker 3: So who are you thinking about using is like Abby
Speaker 3: loll Or, Like, They're like, no, we can't deal with this,
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5: So it was reported that he recently met with Anita
Speaker 5: Dunn and the other members of the team to try
Speaker 5: to get on the same page about Abby, Abby, can
Speaker 5: you please not humiliate us? He's going what she's going
Speaker 5: to do like that? That's like his interest is in
Speaker 5: defending his client, not in you know, the president of
Speaker 5: the United States.
Speaker 2: It's a big political complication and headache for all of them.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next part here, which I wanted
Speaker 2: to spend some time on because I know quite a
Speaker 2: few of you are interested. There has been a new
Speaker 2: allegation from House Republicans and the Senate.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Who are subpoenaing the FBI for alleged Biden w records. Now,
Speaker 2: the White House has gone ahead and denounced this as
Speaker 2: any window, but the subpoena itself is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: They are saying that Christopher Ray, the FBI Director, is
Speaker 2: asking to be provided for records that relate to President
Speaker 2: Biden and his family. They say that there has been
Speaker 2: a new surface allegation based on an unnamed whistleblower made
Speaker 2: to Congress, specifically alleging that the Bureau has a document
Speaker 2: which describes a criminal scheme involving President Biden and a
Speaker 2: foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions,
Speaker 2: in other words, pay for play Biden was vice president
Speaker 2: and relates includes a quote precise description of it. This
Speaker 2: seeks all the forms, companying, attachments and documents that are
Speaker 2: around this investigation. The lawmakers quote use the term alleged
Speaker 2: throughout the opening paragraph, saying that they're not saying this
Speaker 2: is necessarily true, just that there is a credible whistleblower
Speaker 2: disclosure around this. The FBI has not yet responded for comment.
Speaker 2: Likely they're going to say it's an ongoing investigation. We
Speaker 2: don't release documents or whatever related to this investigation, which
Speaker 2: could eventually lead to the release of the or possible
Speaker 2: exposure of the whistleblower, which in my opinion would be great.
Speaker 2: But the Biden White House is calling it innuendo. What
Speaker 2: do you make of this, Ryan, what do you think?
Speaker 5: Fascinating stuff? They should I think they should release the document, because.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got to. Typically the FBI.
Speaker 5: Would say, well, look, we're not releasing all of our
Speaker 5: kind of case material from every investigation that we're doing. Yeah, well,
Speaker 5: not every case material. Investigation involves the President of the
Speaker 5: United States. And so even if you felt, as the
Speaker 5: FBI that you didn't have enough to go forward with
Speaker 5: charges around this claim that somebody got forward.
Speaker 4: You didn't find them credible or whatever.
Speaker 5: At this point, it's up to the American people to
Speaker 5: make that decision on a political basis rather than rather
Speaker 5: than as a criminal basis. So it's kind of let
Speaker 5: us see what this evidence is, who presented this evidence,
Speaker 5: unless it's some like source that is going to get
Speaker 5: capped or something.
Speaker 3: It's interesting. I'm actually speaking with Glenn Greenwall tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I had talked to him quite a bit about Anthrax
Speaker 2: and the anthracs investigation, and I am starting to learn
Speaker 2: that so much of our current problems media, you know, terrorism,
Speaker 2: FBI lawlessness, a lot of it stems back to that investigation,
Speaker 2: because this is what reminded me of it where and
Speaker 2: the FBI is like, well, we don't release stuff, and
Speaker 2: it's like, well, after their prime suspect died, they basically
Speaker 2: were like, yeah, he did it, and.
Speaker 3: They declassified all.
Speaker 2: So it didn't prove it at all beyond a shadow
Speaker 2: of a doubt. And you're like, well, hold on, like
Speaker 2: you just released all. You never charged this man. He
Speaker 2: never even had due process. He ended up killing himself,
Speaker 2: according to his wife, because the FBI was hounding again
Speaker 2: no defense of doctor Ivans, only saying like his guilt
Speaker 2: is definitely not an open and shut thing that the
Speaker 2: way that the FBI would have us believe. And it
Speaker 2: really revealed to me that there's tactics of smearing people,
Speaker 2: going after people, all these Hoover esque type things that
Speaker 2: were said to be abolished by the Church Committee. They
Speaker 2: kind of go to the very root of really original
Speaker 2: nine to eleven period where that's when a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff began and now manifests itself today.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating you bring that up because at the intercept,
Speaker 5: we're working on an investigation of that.
Speaker 3: Very really, Oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 5: I even go further than you. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 5: there's any credible at evidence to say you think I
Speaker 5: visit it was either.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And also looking back, that moment also produced all of
Speaker 5: the biodefense and bio warfare that led to Ladlely fund
Speaker 5: him over over the next twenty years.
Speaker 3: That's actually moment in history. That's why I was interested
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: Was that the anthrax literally the anthrax attack facillit.
Speaker 3: I did a whole monologue on this, people want to
Speaker 3: go watch.
Speaker 2: It was the gateway drug to forty billion dollars ago
Speaker 2: bio defense, which is what loosened the regulations around gain
Speaker 2: of function research, which is what gave Fauci a slush fund, which.
Speaker 3: Is how the money ends up with the Wuhan Lab
Speaker 3: in the first place, which is how COVID gets leaked.
Speaker 4: And they haven't even figured out who did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean they might have, but we should
Speaker 2: talk more offline about this. I'm still very into anthrax.
Speaker 2: I might do an entire monologue. We have a future
Speaker 2: guest actually coming on the show who's going to talk
Speaker 2: about a possible anthrax leak from twenty nineteen that the
Speaker 2: government covered up, So always keep that in mind. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead to the media block. Here Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 2: interesting release from Axios. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. They say, quote scoop, Tucker Carlson
Speaker 2: is ready to torch Fox News. That includes the very
Speaker 2: first quote from Tucker Carlson's lawyer. He says, the idea
Speaker 2: that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him
Speaker 2: from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous. Much of
Speaker 2: this comes to affect actively a contract dispute. Now, at
Speaker 2: this point where Carlson's contract runs, according to insiders, up
Speaker 2: until twenty twenty five, the issue is is that they
Speaker 2: are still paying his contract. It's called what is a
Speaker 2: pay for not play or pay to not play I
Speaker 2: guess where, Because they are still fulfilling the legal terms
Speaker 2: of his contract by paying him his salary and not
Speaker 2: having him on the air. He's kind of in some
Speaker 2: sort of programmatic lockup. Now, what happens in January twenty
Speaker 2: for twenty five? Oh right, it's after the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four election. So there is a lot of speculation that
Speaker 2: Box is actually dragging out any legal negotiation with Tucker
Speaker 2: and his team because they believe that they might benefit
Speaker 2: from silencing him, from keeping any future voice of his
Speaker 2: or project of his to go up, so that they
Speaker 2: have time to rebuild the millions of people that.
Speaker 3: They have lost in his time slot.
Speaker 2: Remember this, they have the worst ratings since pre nine
Speaker 2: eleven in Fox primetime right now. It's a horrific nightmare
Speaker 2: content place that is happening over there. Some of this
Speaker 2: also was leaked to The New York Times. Clearly there's
Speaker 2: a lot of back and forth going on behind the
Speaker 2: scenes between Tucker and his team. Put it up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. It says Tucker Carlson wants to return
Speaker 2: to TV before twenty twenty five, will Fox let him? Basically,
Speaker 2: the speculation is this, either Fox will just drag it
Speaker 2: out and say no, we're not going to negotiate with
Speaker 2: you all we have you completely within the terms of
Speaker 2: the contract, or we may.
Speaker 3: Just not pay you.
Speaker 2: He might have to forfeit all of his salary, not
Speaker 2: have some sort of exit package the way that Megan
Speaker 2: Kelly had.
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of.
Speaker 2: Crazy disclosures happening from behind the scenes of these videos.
Speaker 2: We've covered some of them. I know you guys have
Speaker 2: as well. His text messages. I mean, Fox claims they're
Speaker 2: not leaking it, but is so? I mean, come on, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's gonna leak as it at first, Just how would
Speaker 2: they have access to them?
Speaker 5: They don't have the they don't have and they also
Speaker 5: don't have the redactive texts.
Speaker 3: The band video.
Speaker 2: It only exists in one place people, the Fox servers.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take a genius.
Speaker 3: To figure this out.
Speaker 4: I love that it's a media matter, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course they gave it to medium as genius
Speaker 2: I mean, in many ways that their allies because they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we would never do it, and then they send some
Speaker 2: sort of like cease and desist letter to cover up
Speaker 2: their tracks. It's just laughable. It's obviously you we all
Speaker 2: know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I don't know why they
Speaker 3: think it's working.
Speaker 2: If anything, the Right is only coalescing even more around
Speaker 2: Tucker and they don't think that Fox is legit.
Speaker 5: They don't understand their audience if they think that that's
Speaker 5: gonna hurt Tucker exactly with that audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just so foolish just to even think about.
Speaker 2: But I think it comes back to the fact is
Speaker 2: legally it is a bind, you know, because they do
Speaker 2: have him within the terms of the contract, and they
Speaker 2: basically have to acquiesce to letting him go and to
Speaker 2: do his own thing. We have seen people who are
Speaker 2: on his side, people like Megan Kelly, actually come out
Speaker 2: and go after Fox and has actually been telling Tucker
Speaker 2: to take them to court. She says Tucker should walk
Speaker 2: away and forfeit the pay lets take Fox take him
Speaker 2: to court over the sole issue of silencing him for
Speaker 2: the rest of the election season. The man they fired
Speaker 2: and smeared relentlessly while he stayed silent. See how they're dwindling.
Speaker 2: Audience repays them for that. So that would of course
Speaker 2: be like trial a century right if Tucker Fox takes
Speaker 2: Tucker to court explicitly to keep him within the terms
Speaker 2: of the contract. But at the very least, you know,
Speaker 2: big time media battle gearing up here. Also, can I
Speaker 2: just say this, non competes are bs and they should
Speaker 2: be illegal. Crystal nine had on real problem. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: one hundred percent behind it. Crystaline can't talk too much
Speaker 2: about it. Had a real issue with non competes. I
Speaker 2: had a breaking points on all that. That caused us
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot of stress. And it's not
Speaker 2: even just about us.
Speaker 3: We're fine. There are a lot of people out there.
Speaker 2: You know, we've spoken previously about like grocery store chains.
Speaker 2: We're like, yeah, if you bag for us, you can't
Speaker 2: go back for somebody. It's like excreme legal principle. John
Speaker 2: had him, Jimmy Johnson, That's exactly where that's what I
Speaker 2: was thinking of.
Speaker 3: It's screw you.
Speaker 2: You do not dictate where I work elsewhere you pay
Speaker 2: me to perform a service, and that's it. Everything else
Speaker 2: beyond that is a matter of my individual liberty.
Speaker 3: So it really bothers me.
Speaker 5: The amazing if work was like I will take this job, yeah,
Speaker 5: but you cannot hire another work exactly perfect?
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe like that insane? Yeh, that's not how this works.
Speaker 5: Like, oh, okay, cool, then I'm not signing a nun either.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about the welfare of twenty five million
Speaker 2: dollars salary cable news pundits.
Speaker 3: Okay, we are talking specifically.
Speaker 2: About why legally this is an idiotic framework to conduct yourself.
Speaker 5: Is there a deal to be made where Tucker agrees
Speaker 5: to not disparage Fox and they let him out?
Speaker 4: Like, how do you how do you see this ending?
Speaker 3: Don't I don't know if he would do it. I mean,
Speaker 3: here's the thing.
Speaker 2: They have so unceremoniously fired him and treated him. I mean,
Speaker 2: they didn't even give a chance right for amicable, for
Speaker 2: anything amicable.
Speaker 3: Two days after he's gone, they're leaking his.
Speaker 2: Tax messages and they're linking his text messages and leaking
Speaker 2: videos of him behind the scenes to like they're kind
Speaker 2: of the ones who shot first. I mean first they
Speaker 2: fired him, and then second immediately they're cheap prs. A
Speaker 2: woman named Arena Brigenti, who used to be very powerful
Speaker 2: in the tabloid days, but in the age of the
Speaker 2: Internet now looks like a clown.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what I said, Irena.
Speaker 2: And what it is is that she thinks she's like
Speaker 2: this behind the scenes mastermind who determines Fox. It's very
Speaker 2: like Roger Ailes in terms of we wheeld power. But
Speaker 2: what they don't understand is you're not the only place
Speaker 2: to go anymore. Nobody cares at this point whether they
Speaker 2: get to go on cable television or not. I know
Speaker 2: a lot of young people who are coming up in
Speaker 2: the media industry.
Speaker 3: Not one of them still cares about going on cable.
Speaker 3: Whenever we were coming up, Ryan, he was the only way.
Speaker 3: It was the only opportunity that we had.
Speaker 2: But the moment the Internet happened, I jumped ship. I
Speaker 2: can tell you that in terms of my opportunity to you.
Speaker 2: So did a lot of people like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I remember getting a couple of angry calls
Speaker 5: back in the day from Arena Bte. She's a real screamer.
Speaker 5: Yeah that's kind of weird. Yes, what are you looking
Speaker 5: at today?
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty three is a really interesting time to be alive.
Speaker 2: If you want back fifty years ago and you asked
Speaker 2: Americans what it would be like, they would probably light
Speaker 2: up with wonder. They would have visions of the future
Speaker 2: and technological progress man could hardly imagine. Just think about
Speaker 2: back to the future too in nineteen eighty five. They
Speaker 2: believe twenty fifteen would be a land of different dress
Speaker 2: of hoverboards, of technology which would radically transform the American
Speaker 2: way of life. The real answer was far more depressing.
Speaker 2: Twenty fifteen really wasn't all.
Speaker 3: That different from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: The cars were more fuel efficient, we had the Internet,
Speaker 2: and our economy became one hundred times more financialized. Wages
Speaker 2: were mostly flat, most people's work schedules were exactly the same.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, the pace of technological progress did not
Speaker 2: catch up in the way that we envisioned. In the
Speaker 2: words of venture capitalist Peter Thiel, we were promised flying cars.
Speaker 2: All we got was one hundred and forty care The
Speaker 2: characters though, being a reference to Twitter, which I guess
Speaker 2: today if you pay for Twitter Blue it's unlimited.
Speaker 3: But you get my point. This has been my.
Speaker 2: View of the world now for quite some time, and
Speaker 2: it's why I was not surprised at all with a
Speaker 2: recent poll that took some neoliberals.
Speaker 3: By great surprise.
Speaker 2: More Americans today say that life for people like them
Speaker 2: is worse today than it was fifty years ago, some
Speaker 2: fifty eight percent in twenty twenty three versus just forty
Speaker 2: two percent in July of twenty twenty one. This crosses
Speaker 2: party lines and now maintains a sizable majority of Americans.
Speaker 2: You dig deeper and you actually see more signs of
Speaker 2: rod As Pew notes, quote, sizable majorities of US adults
Speaker 2: say in twenty fifty over twenty five years away, the
Speaker 2: US economy will be weaker of the United States will
Speaker 2: be less important in the world, political divisions will be wider,
Speaker 2: and there will be a large gap between rich and poor.
Speaker 2: As for how people think things are going, quote, Americans
Speaker 2: negative views of the nation's future are influenced by their
Speaker 2: bleak assessments of current conditions. Only nineteen percent say they
Speaker 2: are satisfied with the things are going. Eighty percent are dissatisfied.
Speaker 2: Ratings of the economy remain largely negative, and increasing share
Speaker 2: of public expects economic conditions to worsen over the next year.
Speaker 3: This is bleak stuff, but it bears investigation.
Speaker 2: If most people think the country isn't doing well, who
Speaker 2: actually thinks that it is. The answer won't surprise you.
Speaker 2: The only people who believe the country is doing well
Speaker 2: and will continue doing well are those above the age
Speaker 2: of sixty five, especially Boomer Democrats. Now you might ask
Speaker 2: why would boomers have such confidence in the US and
Speaker 2: the current system. It's easy to have that confidence when
Speaker 2: you have a paid four house that you got for
Speaker 2: cheap retirement savings, which boomed over the course.
Speaker 3: Of your life.
Speaker 2: If you're my age at thirty one, good luck starting
Speaker 2: at the same place as the boomers. You rightfully should
Speaker 2: have zero confidence that you will likely get to where
Speaker 2: they are, or even the same with the same amount
Speaker 2: of work, or possibly even more. That's the fundamental divide.
Speaker 2: It's one that the people who need to internalize, who
Speaker 2: run this country to propagandize you. They're going to throw
Speaker 2: many things at you which are technically not wrong, like,
Speaker 2: for example, but life expectancy is so much better. Yeah, true,
Speaker 2: a couple of years more, and yet in recent years
Speaker 2: we have seen the worst decline in life expectancy in
Speaker 2: the US since World War One, many of those deaths
Speaker 2: having nothing to do with COVID. They'll say, yes, but
Speaker 2: GDP growth is better than ever again technically true, and
Speaker 2: yet wages have grown only by seventeen percent while productivity
Speaker 2: has grown at sixty two. In other words, real wage
Speaker 2: increases have not captured the actual economic gains of the
Speaker 2: economy and fall far short of the previous wage and
Speaker 2: productivity growth from the pre nineteen seventies era. They want
Speaker 2: you to believe that because TVs are cheaper and you
Speaker 2: have a smartphone in your pocket that you are so
Speaker 2: much better off, or that because you will technically live
Speaker 2: two years longer than that's everything. Yet medical costs have
Speaker 2: gone up thousands of percent since that time. Don't think
Speaker 2: that life extension is free, is it? If anything, you
Speaker 2: will die a few years later, but much much unhealthier
Speaker 2: today than you would have been in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: And it brings me back to one of my favorite
Speaker 2: graphics of all time from the website WQF happened in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 3: Here's nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Cost of living a brand new house in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: one was two point five times average income. Today, the
Speaker 2: average price in the US. Home price in the US
Speaker 2: is five times the average income. A new car in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one was one third the average income.
Speaker 3: Today, a new.
Speaker 2: Car price is about fifty six percent of the average income.
Speaker 2: Average rent in the United States in nineteen seventy one
Speaker 2: was one hundred and fifty bucks adjusted for inflation. That's
Speaker 2: around eleven hundred dollars today. Today, the average rent for
Speaker 2: an apartment is seventeen hundred dollars. Harvard tuition in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one, adjusted for inflation was about nineteen thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in today's money in nineteen seventy one. Of course, Harved
Speaker 2: tuition today is fifty four thousand dollars. Since Harvard is
Speaker 2: an outlier, Consider yearly tuition for college. In nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: for a public university it was thirty two one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars in today's money. Yearly tuition Today, average public university
Speaker 2: tuition is twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Should I go on, don't let people gaslight you? Sure?
Speaker 2: Fifty years ago you wouldn't have a cell phone or
Speaker 2: an LCDTV. On average, life was not all that bad.
Speaker 2: Just ask the silent generation.
Speaker 3: And the boomers. It worked out great for them.
Speaker 2: The point is it's not working out that well for us.
Speaker 2: So don't blame us for saying that things are not
Speaker 2: going to be great in the future and that we
Speaker 2: would live rather live in the past. Our futures were
Speaker 2: mortgage squandered in the name of globalization and sold under
Speaker 2: false pretenses to the American people. And this will be
Speaker 2: the defining issue of our time. If not at the top,
Speaker 2: If this is not at the top of mind for
Speaker 2: every single politician today, they don't belong in their jobs
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagre's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: Ryan, let me take a look at it.
Speaker 5: So, when it comes to Democratic Party polics, big money
Speaker 5: made a huge comeback in twenty twenty two, more than
Speaker 5: matching the surge and small dollar contributions that had been
Speaker 5: kicked off by the Bernie Sanders campaign back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 5: and that threatened to reshape the party.
Speaker 4: Now, one of the.
Speaker 5: Leaders of the big money counter revolution is not a
Speaker 5: household name. He's a tech executive named Dmitri Melhorn, whose
Speaker 5: largest source of power comes from his connection to his
Speaker 5: college classmate Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn, who,
Speaker 5: as Saire was mentioned earlier on the show, financed the
Speaker 5: Egen Carol lawsuit and otherwise is spent tens of millions,
Speaker 5: maybe hundreds of millions of dollars on Democratic Party politics
Speaker 5: and going after Trump. But Dmitri, as Democratic insiders all
Speaker 5: call him using only his first name, has been good
Speaker 5: at organizing other like minded mega donors as well, which
Speaker 5: means that he can now move tens of millions of
Speaker 5: dollars with the flick of a wrist. He has directed
Speaker 5: much of that money in alliance with the group Democratic
Speaker 5: Majority for Israel, targeting progressive Democrats in primaries, burying them
Speaker 5: under an avalanche of super PACs spending. So I interviewed
Speaker 5: him from my podcast Deconstructed, which came out this weekend,
Speaker 5: and he laid out his explanation for why it is
Speaker 5: that he's been so heavily invested in undermining the left.
Speaker 5: And I asked him if he was going to continue
Speaker 5: that crusade in twenty twenty four, and his answer, I
Speaker 5: think was revealing.
Speaker 4: Take a list to this.
Speaker 5: How are you thinking about twenty twenty four democratic primaries,
Speaker 5: do you guys feel like, and I've written about this before,
Speaker 5: but mainstream Democrats, the group that you mentioned, plus Democratic
Speaker 5: Majority for Israel, which works very closely with mainstream Democrats,
Speaker 5: really kind of transformed what was possible for think progressive
Speaker 5: left wing candidates in Democratic primaries in.
Speaker 4: The last cycle.
Speaker 5: I'm curious if you think you have essentially tamed the
Speaker 5: left to the point where you're kind of moving on
Speaker 5: from Democratic primaries, or are you guys gearing up for
Speaker 5: another another test in twenty twenty four that if you
Speaker 5: see progressive candidates that you think are two progressive popping up,
Speaker 5: that the super PACs are going to come out guns
Speaker 5: blazing on him.
Speaker 10: I think we're okay. Now, if you run a no
Speaker 10: labels centrist like a Joe Mansion in every state, you
Speaker 10: will split the anti Trump coalition and therefore Trump will win.
Speaker 10: That's the risk, and I think it's a huge risk.
Speaker 10: It is one of the way, one of the top
Speaker 10: five ways that Trump could get reelected is if Nancy
Speaker 10: Jacobson and Mark Penn and Joe Lieberman continue in this
Speaker 10: path and put this bout line in every state when
Speaker 10: they launched this effort, this absurd, venal effort. One of
Speaker 10: the things that they one of the things that they
Speaker 10: did in their video promotion is they talked about how
Speaker 10: bad the two parties were, and the visual images they
Speaker 10: included were Donald Trump on the right and AOC on
Speaker 10: the left, And so they're ignoring the existence of Biden. Now,
Speaker 10: I don't think it works. I actually think No Labels
Speaker 10: has a real risk of collapsing in this effort, and
Speaker 10: I hope that they do. And I think that in general,
Speaker 10: the you know, if you listen to the way Bernie
Speaker 10: Sanders is talking about endorsing Joe Biden, I think I
Speaker 10: am quite confident right now that the actual extremes of
Speaker 10: the left are pretty severely marginalized. That's that's in general
Speaker 10: at the margins. It's a little bit like, for example,
Speaker 10: when and a judge gave a ruling that was really unhelpful.
Speaker 10: This is the judge with the abortion pill, and AOC
Speaker 10: comes out and says, we should just ignore the ruling.
Speaker 10: Like AOC is signing with jd Vance. You know, the
Speaker 10: two of them are both like, yeah, rulings that we
Speaker 10: don't like, we shouldn't, we shouldn't do, and it makes
Speaker 10: it hard to build a coalition of donors around the
Speaker 10: rule of law. But in terms of general voters, I
Speaker 10: don't think it's a problem anymore, and I don't think
Speaker 10: we need to do more to fight back against it
Speaker 10: at the moment.
Speaker 4: Well, they're good good news and bad news for the left.
Speaker 5: They won't get bombed by a superpacks, but that's because
Speaker 5: they've been thoroughly beaten down to the crowd. Yes, there
Speaker 5: you go, congratulations. So two things to talk about here.
Speaker 2: Let's do the left first, and if you want to
Speaker 2: hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber
Speaker 2: today at Breakingpoints dot com. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: watching everybody. We had a fantastic time here bro Show.
Speaker 2: Ryan will be back on Thursday. As I said, we
Speaker 2: have a very ambitious crossover which I'll leave to be
Speaker 2: a surprise for tomorrow's show, which I think everybody is
Speaker 2: really going to enjoy. But with all of that, thank
Speaker 2: you so much to the Breaking Points premium subscribers who've
Speaker 2: been signing up helping us out build here the new show.
Speaker 3: With all of that, we will see you all tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Let's see you guys, soon