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1:04

Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.

1:06

We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Brystal.

1:09

Indeed, we do a plethora of

1:11

big stories to bring in this morning. Of course, We're going to

1:13

update you on the omicron virus

1:16

and variant and everything that Joe Biden

1:18

said about that where we seem to be headed. Few

1:20

updates for you about exactly what

1:22

is going on there. Jack

1:25

Dorsey stepping down as head

1:27

of CEO at CEO

1:29

of Twitter a little bit troubling

1:31

his replacements. Some of the comments

1:34

have been made, so we'll get into

1:36

that. Chris Cuomo under major

1:38

brussure at CNN as new

1:40

revelations about just how directly

1:43

he was involved in his brother's defense, how

1:45

he leveraged his media connections

1:48

to try to help him with the cover up. I'm

1:51

not sure CNN knew that all

1:53

of this was going on, so they have been forced

1:55

to release his statement first time that they've really had

1:57

much to say at all about what's going on

2:00

there. So we'll give you all of those details. Also,

2:02

big news out of Bessemer, Alabama.

2:04

You'll recall workers at the Amazon warehouse

2:07

there. They had been trying to unionize. That

2:09

effort had been defeated, but all along

2:11

those involved with the organizing efforts said, hey,

2:13

this was not on the up and up. Amazon

2:15

cheated and this was unfair practices.

2:18

Well, the NLRB at this point has agreed

2:20

with them. They are calling for a new election

2:22

there down in Bessemer, Alabama, So obviously

2:25

that is huge news. Also, our great

2:27

friend of the show, doctor Fauci making some comments

2:29

quite eyebrow raising. We will get to that

2:32

in a moment, but we wanted to start with the very

2:34

latest on the new omicron variant.

2:36

Joe Biden making some comments yesterday

2:39

about his plans to deal with that virus.

2:41

Let's take a listen to that. The best

2:44

protection I know you're tired of me say

2:46

this, The best protection against this

2:48

new variant or any of the variants

2:50

out there once we've been dealing with already,

2:53

is getting fully vaccinated and

2:56

getting a booster shot. Most

2:59

Americans are fully vaccinated but not yet

3:01

boosted. If you're eighteen

3:03

years or over and got fully

3:06

vaccinated before June the first

3:08

go get the booster shot today.

3:12

They're free, and they're available

3:14

at eighty thousand locations coast

3:16

to coast. A fully

3:18

vaccinated booster person is the most

3:20

protected against COVID.

3:23

Do not wait, go get your

3:25

booster if it's time for you to do so. And

3:28

if you are not vaccinated, now's

3:31

the time to get vaccinated and take your children

3:33

to be vaccinated. Every

3:35

child age five or older can get safe,

3:37

effective vaccines. Now, I

3:41

like the way he calls them fully vaccinateed booster people.

3:44

So a couple things hit the

3:47

totality of effectively what he's saying here is in

3:49

addition to the travel band, which even some

3:51

of his allies and the doctor we talked to you, Yester said,

3:53

this is really going to do anything. This is more theater than

3:56

anything else. He's effectively saying, Look, we're

3:58

not looking at any lockdowns, but we want

4:00

you to get vaccinated and we want you to get

4:02

boosters. This caught both of our

4:04

attention yesterday because

4:06

prior to yesterday, the CDC's

4:09

guidance was that adults can

4:12

get a booster, yes, but that only people

4:14

who are elderly should get

4:17

a booster. Well, that guidance has now

4:19

officially been changed because

4:22

of this new variant. Let's throw that tear sheet

4:24

up on the screen. The CDC strengthened

4:27

its booster recommendations as worries

4:29

mount over the omicron variant, prompted

4:31

by growing concerns, the CDC and Prevention

4:34

Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday

4:36

said all American adults should get

4:38

booster doses of the available coronavirus

4:41

vaccines. Adults age eighteen

4:43

and olders should get a booster shot when they are six

4:45

months past the initial immunization

4:48

with Pfizer or Maderna or two

4:50

months after the single shot JNJA vaccine,

4:53

which has proven to be somewhat less effective than

4:56

the two dose Pfizer

4:58

and Maderna mRNA versions.

5:00

The CDC had previously said Americans

5:02

over age fifty, as well as those ages

5:04

eighteen and older living in long term care

5:06

facilities, should get booster shows,

5:08

while other adults may decide to do so

5:10

based on their individual risk. So shift

5:13

in language here, but also significant. Now

5:15

you have a sort of blanket encouragement

5:19

for all adults to get their booster full

5:21

disclosure. I did get mine over the weekend. I

5:23

was taking my kid to get his first job and decided

5:25

I may as well go ahead and get my booster

5:27

as well. I had very little, minimal side

5:29

effects, just so you guys know. Full transparency.

5:32

But this does mark a shift in terms

5:34

of how the CDC is talking about boosters, and

5:37

this is something we tracked for a while. Yes, because

5:39

frankly, there isn't a lot

5:41

of evidence that boosters are

5:43

particularly needed at this point,

5:45

only for elderly people. For elderly people,

5:48

it seems to work pretty well, right, And so

5:50

you know, one of the things that has been a little

5:52

bit misleading about some of the media presentation

5:55

of the vaccine effectiveness is

5:57

while yes, breakthrough infections

5:59

all a thing, and the efficacy

6:01

with regards to getting COVID at all

6:04

does seem to weigh somewhat over time,

6:06

you still have a lot of protection against severe

6:09

hospitalization and death. Oh yes, so,

6:12

and I actually it's bothered me that

6:14

they haven't frontloaded with that information

6:16

because ultimately you want people to know that the vaccines

6:19

do in fact work and it is worth going

6:21

out and getting them. Yeah. I think that this is the

6:23

communication of on this has been a mess, and this is

6:25

what we flagged on this, which is the

6:27

President came out and said everybody

6:30

should get a booster now. At the time

6:32

that he made that statement, that was not a recommendation

6:34

from the CDC, leading me and many

6:36

other people to be like, hold on a second, did

6:39

Biden just go ahead of what CDC

6:41

guidance was. Then the CDC hours

6:44

later changes guidance. Now. The reason

6:46

I'm dubious and skeptical on this is that remember

6:48

the original booster guidance from the CDC

6:51

and also from the FDA, we

6:53

had those two top scientists at the FDA

6:56

resigned, specifically over Biden

6:58

and the White House getting over at SKIS and

7:01

recommending boosters for all Americans.

7:03

The two scientists resign. Then the

7:05

CDC came out and said, okay, okay,

7:07

we're going to revise our guidance on the booster. The

7:10

official guidance is it's only for people who are

7:12

sixty five or sorry, fifty years and older,

7:14

and also people who are eighteen plus who work

7:16

in a high risk environment. That was the only

7:19

eligibility. Two weeks three weeks

7:21

later, they change it November I think it

7:23

was twenty November, Yeah, nineteenth,

7:25

they came out and they changed a guidance too. Everyone

7:28

is eligible for a booster, as in, you can

7:30

go get one if you want, but you

7:32

should only get one, should being the

7:35

not the can should get one if you're

7:37

fifty years older plus eighteen and

7:39

you work in a high risk environment. So all

7:41

of this has changed within the span of a month and

7:43

a half. Now, look I understand. You know, my public health

7:46

friends will be like, yeah, but omicron, you know the variant

7:48

and changes. But you have to make this

7:50

case very publicly to people or they're

7:52

going to be like, I don't understand what's happening, and

7:55

that seems to be the real problem. I

7:57

completely agree with you. Look double vaccinated,

8:00

Like, yes, you can get a break through infection. It happened

8:02

to me. It does, you know, decrease your odds

8:04

of it like population wide and

8:07

all that, and it's gonna, you know, dramatically

8:09

protect you from hospitalization and

8:11

death. For a lot of the people who are worried about

8:13

side effects and all of that. Myocarditis

8:16

is the one that is cited a lot.

8:18

Your risk is actually much higher from getting

8:20

myocarcaditis, even when you're young, from

8:22

actually getting COVID, specifically

8:24

long COVID, and especially those people

8:26

who are a little bit older thirty five, forty

8:29

or whatever and above. If you look at the risks

8:31

there, Look, it's something you should decide for yourself,

8:34

but it's something that I think we should address here

8:36

on the show. Hospitalization and death. And

8:38

then look, there's risks from getting COVID, and

8:40

you know, there's a quote unquote risk. There

8:42

are side effects, of course from also getting

8:44

the vaccine when you give it to hundreds of millions of people.

8:47

You should compare those two things side by

8:49

side. It's pretty clear. You know which side I

8:51

think, personally think you should fall on. Can I also

8:54

say yeh on the booster thing. I

8:56

decided to get it because I don't want to get COVID, Like

8:59

even though it worried about it. It's not

9:01

fun, but I wasn't worried about being

9:03

in the hospital. I wasn't worried about dying. But

9:06

I, you know, just like I get the flu shot, like, I

9:08

didn't really want to get COVID. So that's

9:10

why I got it. But I do want to

9:12

say, for people who got the Johnson and Johnson

9:14

vaccine, you really should get a second

9:16

one because that one,

9:19

first of all, almost all of the

9:21

protection against getting COVID goes away.

9:23

You still do have significant

9:26

protection against hospitalization and

9:28

death, but it is significantly less

9:30

than with the mRNA vaccine.

9:32

So if you got the J and J vaccine, you

9:34

should go get another one because that one just hasn't

9:37

held up as well as the other two.

9:39

Have another thing that just broke

9:41

at least I just saw this morning, which

9:43

you should take with a million grains of salt,

9:46

because we're talking about a pharmaceutical

9:48

executive who has a financial interest

9:50

in everybody getting boosters and getting

9:52

more vaccines. But the

9:55

CEO of Maderna, which of course

9:57

makes what has turned out to be the most

9:59

effective vac scene, is saying that he

10:01

doesn't think that the vaccines are

10:03

going to hold up all that well against

10:06

omicron. Now that is speculation

10:08

at this point because it's just too early to say,

10:11

but I'll just read to you what he

10:13

is saying. He said the high number

10:15

of mutations on the spike

10:17

protein with omicron, which

10:19

is of course what the virus uses to infect human

10:22

cells, and the rapids spread of their

10:24

variant in South Africa suggested that

10:26

the current crop of vaccines may need

10:28

to be modified next year. He said,

10:30

quote, there is no world

10:33

I think where the effectiveness is the

10:35

same level we had with the delta variant.

10:38

I think it's going to be a material drop.

10:40

I just don't know how much because we need to

10:42

wait for the data. But all the scientists

10:44

I've talked to are like, this is not

10:46

going to be good. That's what someone

10:48

who has a direct financial interest

10:51

in us having boosters and having

10:53

vaccines a new vaccine every

10:55

year, for a new variant every year. That's

10:58

what he's saying. That doesn't mean it's wrong, means

11:00

you should take that into account. And on

11:02

that note, you know, while

11:05

the stock markets dropped and oil futures

11:08

dropped and there was financial fall up

11:10

for most companies because

11:12

of the omicron variant. And

11:14

by the way, these comments knew from the Maderna

11:17

CEO has sent the market even lower. Well,

11:19

it hasn't been bad news for everyone, has

11:21

it. Let's take a listen to an interview with the Pfeiser

11:24

CEO on CNBC. Do

11:26

you see this happening every year? We either

11:28

get a booster boost, a regular booster

11:30

of the same vaccine, or a slightly

11:32

different vaccine every year to deal

11:35

with what we're seeing with these mutations.

11:38

Is that what you first see is it's almost like

11:40

a I mean, for Pfizer, you'd

11:42

be selling these things every year, and not that you

11:44

want to do that. I'm sure you're not hoping for

11:46

that, but it'll be almost like an annuity for

11:49

Pfizer. I

11:51

didn't make a projection months ago,

11:53

but the most likely scenario. It

11:55

is that we will meet after the third dose annual

11:58

revaccinations against of it for multiple

12:00

reasons, because of the immunity that would be waiting, because

12:03

of the virus that I'm sure will be maintained

12:05

around the world for the years to come,

12:08

and also because of the need of variant

12:12

that will emerge. I'm more confident

12:16

right now that this would be the case

12:18

than I was when I made the

12:20

projection. I think we are going

12:22

to have an annual revaccination. I don't know

12:24

how we're going to call it, but would be an

12:26

annual revaccination, and that should be

12:28

able to keep us really safe.

12:32

I mean, you love the just

12:34

nakedness of the financial press, like

12:36

the stock I'm sure you don't want to I

12:39

love this to happen stock prices. This

12:41

is like an annuity for a visor, right with the stock

12:43

prices right there along the side. And listen,

12:46

as we talked about yesterday, the

12:48

ideal, most profitable situation

12:51

for these companies is to make a vaccine that actually

12:53

works so people want it, and then sell

12:55

it at premium prices to the rich world and

12:58

keep the world unvaccinated

13:00

so that we do continue to churn out

13:02

variant after variant after variant, which

13:05

is why it would be so important

13:07

if the Biden administration would stopped us talking

13:09

about lifting patent protections and actually

13:11

put some muscle behind it, get behind

13:14

the existing proposal at the World Traded

13:16

Organization, or write a new proposal,

13:19

and most importantly put their muscle

13:21

behind pressuring Germany in particular to

13:23

get on board with this as well, because it is

13:26

unconscionable, unconscionable that

13:28

you only have six or seven percent

13:31

of Africa vaccinated, that the poor world

13:33

has basically been left out of this entirely

13:36

is just absolutely disgusting. Yeah, and I would also

13:38

say that that's a lot of that needs to be done

13:40

in order to reclaim a lot of ground

13:42

that has been given to people who are very skeptical

13:44

of vaccine because you hear this, I

13:47

mean, what are you supposed to think the guys literally

13:49

saying that you need a shot every year. Three months

13:51

ago, that was considered a conspiracy theory in the United

13:53

States, that you're going to have to have boosters

13:56

over and over again. And that's actually something that is

13:58

cited by a lot of people who don't want the

14:00

vaccine because they're like Look, even if I get

14:02

it, then I still might get it, and then I might have to keep getting

14:04

one over and over again, and I simply don't want

14:07

to or you know, risk compound year over

14:09

year. I get it, Like I completely understand.

14:11

And you know, why should you trust the CEO of

14:13

Visor and especially when they have a direct

14:16

financial incentive in order to do so.

14:18

And then you look at what the government is doing, which is

14:20

essentially embracing this policy. Now,

14:23

who is actually running the show? Is it the actual

14:25

scientists? We will be seen change their minds

14:27

on booster shots three times in the last eight

14:29

weeks, or is it the CEO? I

14:31

mean, we need to reclaim some sort of

14:33

public trust, and that's part of the problem. I

14:35

just think this is completely ridiculous. And you know, I'll put

14:37

my cars on the table. I'm deeply skeptical, and I

14:40

found in my own experience, I don't I'm not getting

14:42

good information like I got, you know,

14:44

two doses of maderna and then I got COVID. Do

14:46

I need a booster shot? There's no official guidance

14:49

on that because natural immunity is not currently recognized

14:51

by the CDC whatsoever in terms

14:54

of its guidance on whether you should get shots or

14:56

not. And look, I realize like how

14:58

I'm beginning to sound, but the to somebody

15:00

who went out and sought out the vaccine

15:02

as early as possible. And then

15:05

also you see this and you say, okay, well, you

15:07

know, I'm a young man, got tubidosis,

15:09

a madernal, also got covid of natural immunity.

15:11

Do I really need a booster shot every single

15:14

year? Or and this is from a population

15:16

wide basis, what if we have it such

15:19

that boosters instead of being recommended

15:21

necessarily for everybody, we focus

15:23

on the ultimate metric, in my opinion, which matters

15:25

the most hospitalization and death. If

15:27

we can reduce that every single year and every

15:30

year, let's say that we do have a booster shot every

15:32

year, and you know, it'll be like the flu vaccine, which is

15:34

that, oh there, you know this particular strain of flu,

15:37

Well, look who everyone should get a

15:39

flu shot, but in general, like who are that they

15:41

really need to be given to the elderly? And

15:43

well, you know, for the flu is actually very much

15:45

more deadly to children. But with covid in particular,

15:48

you could say, okay, if you're old, then

15:50

yes, like you should probably get a booster

15:52

shot, maybe every year, just to make

15:54

sure that you're going to be okay. Do you have

15:56

to recommend it? Though? For everybody else

15:59

this embraces to men COVID zero type

16:01

thinking, which of course he has the direct

16:03

financial incentive in pushing an endemic.

16:06

Model would not push it towards this. It would

16:08

say the option is available to

16:10

those who are in a high risk category immunal

16:12

compromise, et cetera. But for everybody

16:14

else, Yeah, you're probably going to get some strain of

16:16

COVID at some point in your life. I think everybody

16:18

just needs to accept that right now. And the

16:21

real question is around mitigation and making

16:23

sure that hospitalization and death is as low

16:25

as possible. But let me say, yeah,

16:27

with your point that probably everyone's

16:29

going to get COVID at some point in their life.

16:32

If you have been vaccinated, that is a

16:34

much less risky and potentially deadly

16:36

scenario for you than

16:38

if you are unvaccinated. So, look,

16:41

these companies are not good actors,

16:44

and the fact that we are

16:46

dependent on people who have invested

16:49

financial interest in this is growth.

16:52

And the incredibly unfortunate

16:54

side effect of that is, in part it does

16:57

fuel it fuels

17:00

true conspiracy theories about how they want to

17:02

just to make money, but it also fuels

17:04

false conspiracy theories about the

17:06

vaccines themselves being nefarious or

17:09

not working. When we have seen through

17:12

you know, hundreds of millions of trials around the

17:14

world at this point there

17:16

are very safe, minimal

17:19

risk, and highly effective,

17:21

especially when it comes to hospitalization

17:23

and death. And the biggest crime that they are

17:26

committing is by not

17:28

making this a public good so

17:30

that it could be more widely available

17:32

ultimately to the globe. That is

17:34

really, I mean, it really is an unconscionable,

17:37

immoral situation, and I think also

17:39

gets to this core issue that

17:42

you know, I've had with our healthcare system for

17:44

a long time, which is that when profit

17:46

is at the center, that is

17:48

the core value rather than health.

17:51

So this should always you know, from at the beginning, we

17:53

had all to si, oh, we're in it together in World War

17:55

two style mobilization effort, etc. Bullshit,

17:59

bullshit. This should have been a public

18:01

good. This should have been something

18:04

where you know, we make it as cheaply available

18:06

to the world as possible. But that isn't

18:09

you know, in the interest of Maderna and Sizor

18:11

and other companies involved, and we less

18:13

we forget that you the US

18:16

taxpayer funded and created

18:18

and helped develop this technology too.

18:20

So it's not like these companies

18:22

were white knights who saved us all.

18:25

They leveraged research that

18:27

had been publicly funded and ongoing

18:30

for years, and we

18:32

gave them big upfront payments. We moved mountains

18:34

to make sure that the development happened. When the trials

18:36

weren't, you know, they couldn't find enough diverse participants

18:39

for the trials, we made sure they had that and the parts

18:41

they needed, and we went on board and trains

18:44

to get those parts. I mean, the US

18:46

taxpayer is responsible for these vaccines

18:48

and we should be the ones having to say over

18:50

who it is made available to in the world.

18:53

Just one more piece, this great reporting

18:55

from Lefong over at the Intercept. That's

18:57

just how nefarious these

19:00

corporate actors are and how we

19:03

never should, you know, trust

19:06

them in terms of their

19:08

interests. Here, Pfizer

19:11

is now lobbying to thwart whistleblowers

19:14

from exposing corporate fraud.

19:16

They're among the big pharma companies trying to block

19:19

legislation strengthening whistleblowers ability

19:21

to report this law.

19:23

And this is really interesting because this is actually a bipartisan

19:26

effort, let impart by Chuck Grassley,

19:28

a Republican of course, out of

19:30

Iowa. And so this law

19:32

has historically returned sixty seven

19:34

billion dollars to the government. Whistleblowers

19:36

have successfully helped uncover wrongdoing

19:39

by military contractors, banks, and pharmaceutical

19:41

companies. But this law

19:45

protecting whistleblowers who are exposing

19:47

corporate fraud, this has

19:49

been eroded over time, in particular

19:52

by a recent Supreme Court decision.

19:55

And this to me is nuts, but

19:57

it's effectively what the Supreme Court decision said

19:59

is that if the company has any ongoing

20:02

contracts with the government, then we don't

20:04

believe your fraud claims, because surely

20:06

the government wouldn't do business with

20:08

a company that was engaged in fraud. Yeah.

20:11

I've never met a defense contractor that didn't

20:13

engage in fraud exactly Like this

20:15

is insane, but that's what the Supreme

20:17

Court decided. And something else we've of course talked about

20:20

on the show, how the main value and main thing that

20:22

advocates of some of these justices have looked

20:24

for is that they will be reliable allies

20:28

for corporate America. So Chuck Grassley

20:30

and others including Republicans and

20:32

Democrats, have been trying to update this law.

20:35

Pfizer and some of their big

20:38

big pharma allies have

20:40

been standing with them to lobby against it

20:42

aggressively. Yeah, and I was just end with, you

20:44

know, with Matt Stoler. I referenced his tweet,

20:47

but I wanted to make sure you guys saw it all today. Let's put it

20:49

up there on the screen where he says, quote new

20:51

variants from unvaccinated areas that force

20:53

us to get boosters is literally the business

20:55

model of big pharma. And I think that, Crystal,

20:58

that's what you continue to hammer home. And I

21:00

think that we should all really realize here, which is

21:02

that a lot of this with the booster shot,

21:04

its efficacy around the guidance,

21:06

around the financial interest, and more. I

21:09

don't think that we're having the correct conversation

21:11

around it. I think it's both either

21:14

resetting and putting expectations for

21:16

people who are really afraid of COVID that this

21:18

is something that will have to be done population

21:21

wide over and over again, when that's probably not realistic

21:24

in terms of a US population wide basis.

21:26

Two feeding and directly showing

21:28

that these people want boosters forever

21:31

for financial interest. And then three,

21:34

we're the guidance around it changes all

21:36

the time, and I think just moves us away

21:38

from where I would say the center of a gravity

21:40

of American public opinion is, but also just science

21:43

generally. So look, it's the most honest conversation

21:45

we could try and have on this. It's a very fraught topic.

21:47

I bet a lot of people at home are freaked out and are like,

21:50

I don't know what to do. Should I get one? Should I not? I

21:52

get messages from people all the time like here's

21:54

my specific case. By the way, I'm not a doctor, so

21:56

don't ask me. Please

21:58

stop asking me whether your boyfriend should get

22:00

the second JAT or whatever. Look,

22:03

and it's early days with omicron. We

22:05

really don't know much there, and

22:07

I'm gonna wait till you know actual scientists

22:09

evaluate this, not Maderna's

22:12

CEO exactly. But I guess

22:15

to sum it all up, you are correct

22:17

to think that these pharmaceutical giants

22:20

are nefarious actors. But their

22:22

game isn't creating a vaccine that doesn't

22:24

work and then making you get it. The game

22:26

is to have the

22:29

rich world, be the piggy bank, charge premium

22:31

prices and then allow these variants

22:33

to circulate, and just as Mats Doller said, in

22:36

the unvaccinated world, that is

22:38

how they end up with the largest

22:40

possible profit. And so that is

22:42

the that is the angle and the conspiracy

22:45

that you should be very concerned about, Mary Leria,

22:47

that's right, speaking of conspiracy and

22:50

something that we've been tracking here for a long time. I

22:52

know some people are tired of hearing it, but I

22:55

frankly cannot get over the

22:57

total and complete transformation of doctor

22:59

Fauci into an outright

23:02

political actor within the media.

23:04

The transition took like six seven

23:06

months during the actual COVID period of

23:08

twenty twenty, but is fully complete. And

23:11

watching him in particular grapple with

23:14

all of the questions around his own role and gain

23:16

a function research in the origin of

23:18

COVID in the first place, all came

23:20

to four over the weekend. This was basically

23:22

completely ignored by the media, and I guess

23:24

I have to give CBS some credit because they

23:26

pressed him on it a little bit. So let's put

23:28

this up there on the screen. Actually tweeted it out over

23:31

the weekend. But there's a section of this transcript,

23:33

which is very important. Margaret Brennan to faced

23:35

the Nation asks doctor Fauci, quote,

23:38

Beijing acknowledges, now they

23:40

don't think that it originated in a market.

23:42

She's referencing COVID. He says, quote,

23:44

well, it may not have originated in

23:46

the market, but it certainly could

23:48

have. I mean, I don't think that they admitted

23:51

it that it didn't originate. I think they're saying

23:53

they don't know how it originated. And so she

23:55

continues to press him even more

23:57

within the transcript, Crystal, and he

24:00

continues to bring it back to the

24:02

wet market theory four or five

24:05

different times. And this is remarkable

24:07

to me because the amount of evidence

24:09

currently on the wet market wet

24:12

market hypothesis is you would have to believe

24:14

that a Liotian bat one thousand

24:16

miles away somehow was able

24:19

to come to Wuhan and

24:21

then it was you know, like maybe eaten

24:23

or bit what was it bit a panglin

24:26

and then that panglin was eaten by

24:28

a human or what's

24:31

more likely, What did we just learn from documents

24:33

released literally two weeks ago, which

24:35

is that that specific Layotan

24:37

bat which had a virus, which

24:40

was ninety eight percent genetically similar to

24:42

the current COVID nineteen was actually

24:44

being specifically studied and used in experiments

24:47

at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. You tell

24:49

me which one is a little bit

24:51

more likely. Once again, if

24:53

that the latter one about the Wuhan

24:55

Institute, the lab leak and all of that is

24:58

true, then it directly implicates doctor

25:00

Fauci. But you and I were talking. I mean, you read

25:02

this transcript. It's bonkers. I mean, it's like,

25:04

actually crazy, it actually is. Because

25:07

I was a little bit like, I just read that one part and

25:09

I was like, okay, But then you go on and

25:11

you read the whole thing. The thing that stood

25:13

out to me is she asks

25:15

about do we need to further

25:18

regulate gain a function research, and he's

25:20

like, no, we already did that. We're

25:22

good to go. No problem there. She reversed

25:24

the regulation on and then then

25:27

she asked him if we need to further regulate

25:29

wet markets and he's like, oh, one hundred percent right.

25:31

So hold on a second. So the one

25:33

with no with no evidence behind

25:36

it that needs to be regulated, the one with a ton of evidence

25:38

behind it and actually with a bunch of US

25:40

government dollars that he that

25:42

he contributes and controls. Oh,

25:45

that stuff needs to be regulated,

25:47

right, Well, in the other thing, We'm sorry, not regulated. The

25:50

other thing that reminded me of a point

25:52

we have been making for a long time is, you

25:54

know, the reason that you weren't allowed to talk

25:56

about the lab leak hypothesis originally

25:59

was because it was supposedly racist to

26:01

talk about, right. That was the That was

26:03

the trump card, no pun intended used

26:06

to shut down any discussion in the

26:09

press about the lably hypothesis.

26:11

People are being censored on different social media

26:13

platforms or even discussing it because it was quote unquote

26:15

racist. But he goes on to talk

26:18

about these wet markets. I mean, it's

26:20

to me, it's a much more sort of caricaturish

26:23

and potentially racist commentary

26:25

that he's making there about like all these

26:27

weird animals it markets,

26:30

And yeah, I mean that to me

26:33

was a lot more problematic than the idea

26:35

that as is the case oftentimes.

26:39

I mean, this would not be even close

26:41

to the first time that something escaped out

26:43

of a lab, Like, how is that racist?

26:46

That was just so it reminded

26:48

me of that as well. But he really does, repeatedly

26:51

throughout this interview go back

26:54

to his conviction that

26:56

it still may have come out of

26:58

the wet market and points to the fact that

27:00

and I think that this is true, that

27:02

they made sure to like clean out that scrub

27:05

the wet market and remove all the animals and everything

27:08

early on, he insinuates that's,

27:10

you know, sort of part of a cover it. But they also did

27:12

weird things at the lab. They scrubbed the

27:14

server there in September two nine, they

27:17

changed the air conditioning unit and all that stuff.

27:19

That part he doesn't seem to take

27:21

as evidence of a cover up, even

27:23

though it potentially is. It's truly nuts. And

27:26

look, as I said it over again, even the

27:28

Chinese don't try and push the lab leak

27:30

theory, sorry, the wet market theory. They're

27:32

like their theory is basically like, oh, it was on

27:34

some goods and you know, it like made its way

27:36

here and that's kind of how it happened. And by the

27:38

way, just stop asking a lot of questions. If you're in China,

27:40

yeah, you know, just just zip it. And if you do, if

27:43

you don't sip it, yeah you're going to prison. That's

27:45

that's what they've been doing over there in

27:47

May of twenty twenty as recently they were

27:49

not even standing by the wet market

27:51

theory. So that just goes to show you there

27:54

is not a single realistic

27:56

iota of evidence behind the wet

27:58

markets specific theory. I'm not saying

28:00

zoonotic origin. I'm saying the wet market

28:02

specific theory. There's a ton more

28:05

circumstantial on the lab week. Guess

28:07

which one Fauci is contributing to. And

28:09

really I found this next clip that we're about to show

28:11

you, I really found it disgusting. Look.

28:13

I don't like Ted Cruz. I don't particularly love Rand

28:15

Paul either. Okay, they're both very

28:17

partisan actors, etc. But they

28:20

are elected United States senators. Doctor

28:22

Fauci is the government official and specifically

28:25

supposed to be a nonpartisan and at the very

28:27

least try to have some trust with the American

28:29

people. Now, when Margaret Brennan presses

28:32

him on what do you think about you know,

28:34

the quote unquote attacks by Rand

28:36

Paul or Ted Cruz says you should

28:38

be prosecuted. Look at how much

28:40

of like a Rachel mattout viewer that this guy

28:43

turns into. Just take a listen to this. So

28:45

anybody who spends lies and

28:48

threatens and all that theater that

28:50

goes on with some of the

28:52

investigations and the congressional committees

28:55

and the Rand polls and all that other nonsense,

28:57

that's noise, Margaret, that's

29:00

noise. I know what my job is.

29:02

Senator Cruz told the attorney general you should

29:05

be prosecuted. Yeah, I

29:08

have to laugh at that I

29:11

should be prosecuted. What happened

29:13

on January sixth? Senator, do

29:17

you think that this is about

29:19

making you a scapegoat to deflect course

29:22

President Trump. Of course you

29:24

have to be asleep not to figure that one out.

29:26

Well, there are a lot of Republican

29:28

senators taking aim at

29:31

this. I mean, that's okay. I'm

29:33

just going to do my job and I'm going

29:36

to be saving lives, and they're going to be lying. It

29:38

seems another layer of danger to

29:41

play politics around matters

29:43

of life and death right exactly exactly,

29:45

And to me, that's unbelievably

29:48

bad because all I

29:51

want to do is save people's lives. And

29:53

I mean, anybody who's looking at

29:55

this carefully realizes

29:57

that there's a distinct anti

29:59

scigence in flavor to this so

30:02

if they get up and criticize science, nobody's

30:05

gonna know what they're talking about. But if

30:07

they get up and really aim their

30:09

bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could

30:11

recognize there as a person there, so it's

30:13

easy to criticize. But they're really

30:15

criticizing science because

30:18

I represent science. That's

30:21

dangerous. Oh okay,

30:23

he represents science. It's the ego

30:25

of this man is unbelievable. Look, I

30:27

know, I know it sounds partisan,

30:29

but anybody who is able to look at this, you

30:31

don't even have to like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul

30:34

or whatever. You cannot declare yourself

30:36

science. And what did we just point to

30:38

preceding this is ignoring

30:41

actual facts and evidence and

30:43

pushing a hypothesis because you have a direct

30:45

interest in making sure that one is true

30:48

and one is not true. It's just completely

30:51

crazy. And this is the man who runs

30:53

a lot of our policy. Yeah, that's

30:55

the thing is, like you have to please,

30:57

like I'm begging the wine mobs of America,

31:00

like wake up and see for

31:02

what it is. You cannot behave this

31:04

way. I don't

31:06

really care that much about the Ted Cruise comment, to be honest

31:08

with you, but the I am science. Thing is

31:11

just so profoundly

31:14

wrong and unhelpful. I

31:16

mean, just as much as Ted

31:18

Cruz and Rand Paul, any sort of conspiracy

31:21

theorist minded person, let's put them aside,

31:23

would want to turn him into into science,

31:26

because then you can put if you can poke holes in a

31:28

fallible human being, then well, I

31:30

mean, that is a really bad

31:32

state of affairs for you to then lean into

31:34

and say, yeah, you're right, I am science, and when

31:36

you attack me, you're attacking science, when

31:38

we know provably that he has

31:40

been an incredibly fallible human being

31:43

who was wrong about mass to start with,

31:45

and you know, and wrong

31:48

because he was just lying, not because

31:50

he had bad information and came to America, oh now

31:52

we know more. No, because he wanted to

31:55

make sure that frontline healthcare

31:57

workers had the ppe they needed, which is a noble

31:59

goal, but you don't have to lie to the American people about

32:01

it. That was one. Of

32:03

course, we know the changing narrative on herd immunity

32:06

and how he changed his numbers on what percent

32:08

of the population we need to have immunity before

32:10

you could consider it having heard immunity, and

32:13

he admitted that he did that based on what he thought

32:15

the public could handle. At that point,

32:17

of course, we know he's got a direct

32:20

personal interest in pushing

32:22

towards the zoonotic origin thesis

32:25

or apparently holding on for dear

32:27

life to the wet market thesis versus

32:29

the Labe hypothesis. So

32:31

if you put yourself in that position,

32:33

if you lean into that saying yeah,

32:35

you're right, I am science, then

32:38

he's correct that it makes it easy to

32:41

sort of undermine scientific

32:43

consensus writ large, because every

32:45

human being is going to ultimately be

32:48

fallible. So that's why this is so bad

32:51

and damaging and also just incredibly

32:54

incredibly egotistical to

32:56

be like, if you're attacking me, you

32:59

are actually attacked science when you

33:01

know there are a lot a lot

33:03

of bad faith attacks on doctor Fauci.

33:06

There's a lot of total conspiracy

33:08

and insanity around doctor Fauci,

33:10

but there are also good faith critiques

33:13

that are about him not

33:16

adhering to the science, not

33:19

following the data, and just being upfront with

33:21

people and acting more like a spin doctor

33:23

and a politician than a public health official,

33:25

which is what he is doing and is not what he

33:28

was asked to do. It's a betrayal of the public

33:30

trust in my opinion, Actually we're a lot worse off because

33:32

of it. Let's

33:35

get to the next segment. This was

33:38

set the Internet on fire, specifically

33:40

Twitter yesterday the big headline

33:42

news Jack Dorsey is leaving

33:45

Twitter. So let's go ahead and put this up there

33:47

on the screen. He wrote a very long goodbye

33:50

email. I'm not going to read it all to you. It's basically,

33:52

after sixteen years of having a role in a co

33:54

founder, CEO, etc. Of this

33:56

company, I have decided it's finally time for

33:59

me to leave. What he gets

34:01

to and the most important part is he says

34:03

that he will appoint a new CEO

34:06

whose name is Paragu agar

34:08

Wah. So a lot of questions are currently a

34:11

rising. What does Parague agar Wall

34:13

believe about Twitter? Who is Parague Agarwalal?

34:16

Okay, so let's get a little bit into his background.

34:18

Paragu he started as an engineer

34:20

at the company. He is a longtime fixture

34:22

within the engineering community of Silicon Valley.

34:25

From what I have heard, he's actually pretty well liked

34:27

once again within the engineering community, and

34:29

he was a CTO of Twitter, the chief technology

34:32

officer. Here's the problem, though, Paragu

34:35

is an engineering type who is

34:38

now the CEO of a company who doesn't

34:40

really have engineering problems. This

34:42

company's problem is that they have big

34:44

socio metapolitical questions

34:46

to answer. What does free speech

34:49

mean? What does regular Should we amplify

34:51

this or not? Our business model

34:53

says one thing, our politics say another.

34:56

Democracy is another thing. All

34:58

of elites are on our platform. Regulating

35:01

this public sphere is really difficult to

35:03

do that. You actually need to have some principles.

35:06

Now here's the thing about Jack Dorsey. I'm

35:08

not going to say the guy was the best CEO in

35:10

the world, but at the very least, and I'd say

35:12

this on a personal level, personal level,

35:14

he was actually kind of committed to free speech. As

35:16

in, look, I get it, Evan Trump from

35:19

the platform, New York Post all of that. If

35:21

anything, his crime is being negligent and only

35:23

running the company for like, you know, ten percent

35:25

of his time while he's co CEO. Square that

35:28

being said, and this isn't just me Glenn Greenwald

35:30

and others who have been in dialogue with him, he

35:32

personally was committed to free speech, trying

35:34

to very big believer in bitcoin decentralization

35:38

and the inability of someone like himself

35:40

in order to run the public square, launching

35:42

Blue Sky, which was you know, an alternative

35:44

which would have been decentralized and all of that and

35:46

not would have allowed deplatforming. What I'm

35:49

saying is is he was not perfect, and the company that

35:51

he built ultimately did become a very censorious

35:53

place, but that he himself at least

35:55

did not abide by that. This new guy

35:58

is actually way worse and is much more more

36:00

of a reflection of exactly

36:02

that censorious lean behind the Twitter

36:04

staff. And this is an interview that he gave

36:07

just last year after the election. And

36:09

I also want to say this pre January

36:12

sixth, That's why it's so important, pre January

36:14

sixth, in how paragog Arwal, the new

36:16

CEO, was talking as recently

36:19

about the way that they would be regulating

36:21

content. So let's put this up there on the screen. It

36:23

was an interview with MIT Technology

36:25

Review. Quote. Our

36:28

role is not to be bound

36:30

by the First Amendment, okay,

36:33

but our role is to serve a

36:35

healthy public conversation, and

36:37

our moves are reflective

36:40

of things that we believe lead to

36:42

a healthier public conversation.

36:44

Now that should scare the hell out of you. Why

36:47

Because he is explicitly casting

36:49

aside the First Amendment in

36:51

favor of what he and the team

36:53

at Twitter decides is a healthy

36:56

public conversation. Now, as we

36:58

found out, this team does not

37:00

believe that the Hunter Biden laptop story at

37:02

the time would have added to a quote

37:04

healthy public conversation. And

37:07

whenever you say things like we're not bound

37:09

by First Amendment, you're also explicitly

37:11

saying we're not bound by freedom of

37:13

the press. We are not bound by the

37:15

ability for people to express themselves and have

37:17

a healthy debate within a public sphere.

37:20

Instead, Crystal, what they are pointing to

37:22

is that we don't really believe in

37:25

being bound by this arcade idea. They

37:27

are almost imbuing themselves, he specifically

37:30

with godlike powers and saying, no, it's

37:32

our job to create a healthy public

37:34

conversation. And by doing that, they're

37:37

going to pick and choose what gets amplified,

37:39

what gets not, what gets censored, what doesn't.

37:42

And I would point out that agar Wall himself

37:44

has you know, he's had some problematic

37:47

tweets that he's had in the past, and

37:49

you know, oh, oh yeah, it's actually kind of hilarious

37:51

because he didn't go

37:54

and scrub all the tweets, which

37:56

it's like, dude, did you not know that you were going to

37:58

be the CEO of Twitter? I

38:00

mean I'm assuming that that was going to

38:02

be one that you were going to go ahead and look to.

38:05

And yeah, so he didn't. He didn't go

38:07

ahead and scrub all of his tweets.

38:09

In twenty ten, he tweeted quote, if

38:11

they're not going to make a distinction between

38:13

Muslims and extremists, then why should I

38:15

distinguish between white people and racists?

38:19

Wait a little bit of a problem.

38:22

Now, I'll give you. I'll

38:25

give you the context, because he claims the context

38:28

he was quoting as

38:30

if Manvi from The Daily Show.

38:33

Look, I mean you see you Twitter

38:35

conversation? Is that healthy conversation? Is

38:37

that a healthy public square? I mean, look,

38:40

the other thing that's funny is if you this interview

38:43

was actually a very good interview. Yes, they asked him

38:45

a lot of really salient

38:47

questions, and part of it

38:50

is they push him on, well, okay,

38:52

what are your metrics for a healthy conversation? Like,

38:55

give me some specifics here about what

38:57

are you looking for? What are the metrics? How

38:59

are you going to do with it? What are your strategies

39:01

and it's just all this fuzzy,

39:04

amorphous, Silicon Valley speak

39:07

that ultimately means nothing.

39:09

And he goes on after he says that thing

39:11

about our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment. He

39:13

said, the kinds of things that we

39:16

do about this is focus less

39:19

on thinking about free speech but

39:21

thinking about how the times have changed.

39:24

One of the changes today that we see is speech is

39:27

easy on the internet, most people can

39:29

speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized

39:31

is who can be heard. The scarce commodity

39:33

today. Commodity today is attention. There's

39:35

a lot of content out there, a lot of tweets out there, and not all

39:38

of it gets attention, so subset of it gets

39:40

attention. And so increasingly

39:42

our role is moving towards how

39:44

we recommend content, and that

39:46

sort of is a struggle that we're working

39:48

through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation

39:51

systems that we're building, how we direct

39:53

people's attention is leading to a healthy

39:55

public conversation that is most participatory.

39:58

So if you unpack that, what he's

40:01

saying is, look, first of all, First

40:03

Amendment, whatever times have change,

40:05

right, and so what we're focused on

40:08

is what gets heard, so

40:11

that gives you a little bit of insight into

40:13

what some of their strategies probably already

40:16

are and will be going forward. Which

40:18

is rather than just blanket

40:21

like sort of you know, censorship or

40:23

banning or pushing off the platform, which they may do,

40:25

they'll do some of as well, it's more

40:27

suppressing, it's a little more

40:29

under the radar, so making sure

40:32

that the things that actually get promoted and

40:34

are likely to show up in your feed are

40:36

the things that they deem to be healthy

40:38

conversation, which is again

40:41

why at the very least

40:44

these companies should be forced to disclose

40:47

what their algorithms are, what their procedures

40:50

are, because otherwise you're

40:52

flying blind. You may feel like

40:54

I don't think people are seeing this tweet. I don't feel

40:56

like people are able to search for my content

40:59

and see what I'm doing here, and not just on Twitter

41:01

but YouTube and everywhere else. Yes, which we deal

41:03

with all the time. We deal with all the time where you

41:05

feel like you're going crazy because you're like

41:07

there's something going on here, but you can never

41:09

prove it because all of this stuff is

41:11

completely opaque. You can never learn

41:14

what's actually going on behind the

41:16

scenes. And so I think what this

41:19

really points to is we have

41:21

got to know how they are

41:23

making these godlike decisions about

41:25

what a healthy conversation is and

41:28

what is in sinots. Obviously they don't

41:30

feel bound quote our role

41:32

is not to be bound by the First Amendment.

41:34

Okay, so what are you bound by and

41:36

how exactly are you making those determinis

41:39

what you're bound by is the mob of your employees,

41:41

which they have cave to over and over again. And

41:43

Jack, I mean in some limited instances,

41:46

like I'm saying, was pushing back in this case,

41:48

I don't expect that at all. Look, I have

41:50

talked to some of these Silicon Valley engineering

41:53

types. In my general opinion, these people

41:55

don't have a damn clue. Okay, they have no idea

41:57

because they engineered this amazing

42:00

technology, but they are not equipped

42:02

to understand the socio political

42:04

implications of the technology itself.

42:06

I don't think Twitter has an engineering problem.

42:08

I don't think they have even a product problem. Yes,

42:11

they need to add like a subscription product. Okay,

42:13

that's easy, and they're going to print billions of dollars.

42:15

What they have to decide is how

42:17

do we talk on the Internet. What gets

42:20

amplified what gets not Should

42:22

we abide by a consistent standard

42:24

or should we have it so that our employees are

42:26

going to revolt against this, revolt against that.

42:29

How do you actually have a standard

42:31

on which you can apply so that everybody

42:33

buys into those rules, as you said, at

42:36

least be required to publish what those

42:38

moderation standards are. Right now, it's

42:40

up to mister Agarwall, and mister Agarwall

42:42

has told us specifically, I do not want

42:44

to abide by the First Amendment in

42:46

my content decisions. And you know,

42:49

a lot of people who observe the

42:51

want, want of free speech, of

42:53

a First Amendment type environment on the

42:55

Internet, you should be very disappointed, I think

42:57

by this choice today, I think is tremendous failure

43:00

on the part of Twitter, their

43:02

their their board of directors and all

43:04

of that. And I think it's going to be a disaster in twenty

43:06

twenty three when Trump is running again,

43:09

or we have an election cycle Hunter Biden

43:11

laptop. It's going to be times twenty in my opinion.

43:14

And Twitter occupies a

43:16

very unique space in the

43:18

information ecosystem. It's,

43:20

you know, disproportionally where elites are. I

43:22

mean, this is where elite caught every journalist.

43:25

We look at our show, right, like, how many of

43:27

it our tweets? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

43:29

So it's it's very very elite

43:32

driven, which makes it disproportionately

43:34

impactful. Yes, So who's running

43:37

the ship there and what sorts of decisions they're

43:39

making have just you know, massive

43:41

consequences for what ultimately

43:44

ends up being seen and heard and the type

43:46

of discourse we're able to have. Absolutely,

43:48

Okay, some bombshell news, some

43:51

great news. Frankly out of besper Bessemer,

43:53

Alabama. You guys will recall we covered this year

43:55

extensively the Amazon

43:58

warehouse down in Bessemer. There was effort

44:00

to unionize that warehouse.

44:03

Ultimately, when the vote came down, it was

44:05

a dramatic loss for the union.

44:07

However, we talked to the president

44:10

of the union that was trying to organize

44:12

them, and we talked to other reporters

44:14

who were down there on the scene, and they said there

44:17

was a lot of funny business going on here,

44:19

and in particular, the thing that they

44:21

consistently pointed to was that

44:23

Amazon had a post

44:26

office box installed on

44:28

their property that they effectively

44:31

had control over at least gave the employees,

44:33

the feeling that Amazon

44:36

was sort of controlling this election

44:38

process. Now, the

44:40

National Labor Relations Board, the regional

44:43

directors in that area

44:46

had laid out very specifically

44:49

all of the parameters of the election, when

44:51

it's going to happen, how long the mail in vote's going

44:53

to occur. And Amazon

44:55

asked to have this drop

44:58

box put on the property. They said

45:00

specifically no, and Amazon

45:03

goes ahead and does it anyway. Anyway,

45:05

there were also other problems in

45:07

terms of One of the things they're pointing

45:10

to is that workers

45:12

were effectively polled for union

45:14

support, which again is illegal, by

45:17

being told that if they don't support

45:19

the union, they need to pick up anti

45:21

union sort of propaganda or like

45:24

merchandise, and so that gave

45:26

them a very clear sense of which workers

45:28

were pro union and which workers were anti union.

45:31

Again, this is illegal. You can't pull the

45:33

workers in advance because this is putting

45:36

you undue pressure on them in a very public

45:38

way. So the bottom

45:40

line of all of this is that the regional

45:43

NLRB agreed with

45:45

the union and the union organizers

45:48

that this election was improper

45:50

and that Amazon had illegally

45:53

violated workers' rights in

45:55

the way that they went about this, both with

45:57

regards to the mailbox and with

45:59

regards to these sort of this method that

46:01

they use to pull publicly their

46:04

employees. And so they have issued

46:06

an order granting Bessemer

46:08

Amazon workers a new election. Stuart

46:11

Applebaum, who's the president of the Retail, Wholesale

46:13

and Department Store Union, let's go ahead and throw the tear sheet up

46:15

on the screen, said that the decision

46:18

substantiates, substantiates their

46:20

claims that the first vote on unionized

46:22

in Amazon warehouse was tainted

46:24

by what the union called illegal misconduct

46:27

that interfered with the election. Quote.

46:29

Today's decision confirms what we were saying

46:31

all along that Amazon's intimidation

46:34

and interference prevented workers from having

46:36

a fair say and whether they wanted a

46:38

union in their workplace. And as the regional

46:40

director is indicated, that is both unacceptable

46:43

and illegal. So the process

46:45

going forward, the date for the new election

46:48

has not been sent set. Amazon

46:50

has until I think December thirteenth

46:53

to appeal this to now the National

46:55

neighbor National Labor Relations Board,

46:58

which of course the members of which have been set by the Biden

47:00

administration. So they're much more pro union

47:03

than you know, Trumpets stacked it with a bunch of

47:05

anti union lawyers,

47:07

and it had a very anti worker stance.

47:09

So they have a good shot at prevailing even

47:11

at the national level. In the meantime,

47:14

they haven't set the date, and the election may

47:16

actually go on before that

47:18

appeal has been fully like,

47:20

that process has fully occurred, if

47:22

you read between the lines. And there's a new Washington Post

47:25

article out about this this morning as well. It

47:27

seems like because the regional

47:30

analogy specifically set these terms

47:32

and Amazon asked for this dropbox and they

47:34

said no, and then they did it anyway, Like I think

47:36

they pissed these people off. Yeah, where they're

47:38

like, no, I told you you can't do this, and then you

47:40

went and did it anyway. And so you know, this

47:42

is a a great win for the union, and obviously

47:45

the odds are still still a long shot. But I'd

47:47

also say the environment's a lot different now

47:49

than it was at the time. That's right, it is very different,

47:52

and it's very important to understand that. That being

47:54

said, the deck was stacked against them from the first

47:56

place. I also, and look, Stewart, you know, if you're

47:58

listening, I'm sorry, but you pointed

48:01

out this excellent article at the time.

48:03

I forget who wrote it, specifically

48:05

about the failures of union drives,

48:08

and it was pointing to Amazon but also

48:10

in the modern era. And what they point to is that

48:12

a lot of the organizers themselves were

48:15

young activists who were speaking

48:17

social justice speak to a lot of these people,

48:19

emphasizing black lives matter to

48:22

a bunch of Amazon employees when you

48:24

know, we have seen time and time again on

48:26

our show, the Jacobin Poll and more,

48:29

what are the things that actual working class people,

48:31

even working class Black people, want

48:33

to hear whenever it comes to both unions and

48:35

too politics. They want to hear about how it's

48:37

going to impact their wage, their life and

48:40

all of that. And instead they were having

48:42

social justice speak kind of being pushed towards

48:44

them as the opening message, which turned

48:46

a lot of these people off in the ultimate election.

48:48

How much did the Amazon dropbox change.

48:51

I literally have no idea. And it's not just about

48:53

that. I mean, we've covered this on our show. They

48:55

change the traffic

48:58

lights outside of the outside

49:00

of the area the warehouse

49:03

so that worker I think it was a sped up

49:05

the red light or something like that, so that people could

49:07

not come and congregate and organize

49:09

in that drive. Amazon made them sit through all

49:11

of these informational sessions. They basically

49:14

went right up to the line, if not over the line

49:17

legality. Right. Yeah, at the very least they have

49:19

at least been recognized of going over the line.

49:21

I am not minimizing that. I want these people

49:23

to have the best and to have better lives and all

49:25

of that, but it's also on the Union and them

49:28

to actually try and message this thing properly if

49:30

they're going to try again, and the national

49:32

environment would be very conducive to this.

49:34

I really believe this. The Great Resignation

49:36

is already happening. Yes, Amazon

49:39

has thrown I think it was seventeen eighteen whatever

49:41

dollars minimum wage. They talk about healthcare,

49:44

all of this, but people, and Amazon

49:46

specifically has already admitted that they're

49:49

having trouble hiring people in the middle

49:51

of a labor shortage. There has never

49:53

been more bargaining power for these people than

49:55

right now, So right now would be the time to

49:57

do it. I do think it's on the Union to try again

50:00

and to actually message it effectively this time.

50:02

I think I'm trying to remember. I think it was in the nation

50:05

that piece that you referenced at the time.

50:07

I found it very eye opening to me personally.

50:09

I'm like, oh, this is also why I failed.

50:11

It's not just Amazon exactly. This

50:14

is about talking to people about what they really

50:16

care about. And like you said, look, you don't have to

50:18

not care or whatever about Black Lives Matter

50:20

or social justice. But whenever you're trying

50:22

to talk to somebody and convince them to do something

50:24

in this way, you have to lead with a

50:27

lot more of what is actually going to do for your life.

50:29

What are your actual concerns about what's happening here on

50:31

the job one hundred percent? And look, I mean I

50:33

wasn't there. I don't know how the messaging was

50:36

done to what extent. I don't

50:38

know how reflective that article was or not. I think

50:40

the biggest issue is simply

50:42

the way that the deck is stacked against workers in all

50:44

of these places. That's obviously the overarching

50:47

problem why we have such low unionization rates in

50:49

the country. But if ever there was a time,

50:51

it is now. And I don't want to get

50:53

anybody's hopes up because very likely the

50:56

election goes the way the last one did, and

50:58

it wasn't close. It was like two thirds to one

51:00

start. It was rough roughly something like

51:02

that two to one effectively in the end count.

51:05

So, you know, very difficult

51:08

odds.

51:09

Very much

51:12

the odds are stacked against them and they have

51:14

a big hill to climb here. But what

51:16

we've been tracking is how

51:19

much there is a different

51:21

feel in the air now with workers,

51:24

whether they're walking out of their fast food

51:26

jobs on mass, whether they are

51:29

authorizing strikes in the

51:31

strike wave that we've seen across the country,

51:33

whether they're the Starbucks workers who in

51:35

a couple different locations now have filed

51:38

and are trying to unionize.

51:40

There is a lot of momentum

51:42

at this moment behind workers

51:44

who are trying to claim a little

51:47

bit more power and a little bit more

51:49

in terms of scheduling,

51:52

in terms of benefits, in terms

51:54

of wages, and all of those things.

51:56

So Amazon will do everything

51:59

that they possibly can to make sure that

52:01

the result turns out the same way

52:03

again. You know, in the

52:05

past, they've fired workers, as we

52:08

covered yesterday, fired

52:10

a young homeless man who

52:13

was working at their warehouse in Staten Island because

52:15

seemingly he became an

52:18

outspoken advocate for the union and

52:20

that was unacceptable to them, so they fired

52:22

him. Christian Smalls, of course fired

52:25

And there are other instances across the country

52:27

where they have been caught retaliating

52:30

against workers who have wanted to organize.

52:32

So I don't think anyone should delude themselves

52:34

about the tactics they are able and willing

52:36

to use in this instance, and just

52:39

how difficult it is to certify,

52:42

to certify an union, to join a union.

52:44

But they are getting another shot at it.

52:46

It's something we're going to watch very closely,

52:49

and it will be really interesting. I

52:51

mean, this is almost like an in a lab

52:53

test case of the difference

52:55

between when this was happening at the beginning

52:58

of last year versus now,

53:00

and whether there really is a different environment

53:04

for workers and

53:05

their power and their

53:07

ability to assert themselves in the workplace. I think

53:09

things have changed a lot. I think things could really

53:12

this could be a big one, in my opinion. We'll see.

53:14

I'm not ready to get my hopes up there, but we

53:16

will watch it closely. Okay, big

53:18

news for the Cuomo brothers.

53:21

It's another story we've been following really

53:23

closely. So new information

53:26

was put out by New York Attorney General Letitia

53:28

James, who's now running for governor of New York

53:31

about just how involved

53:33

brother CNN primetime host

53:36

Chris Cuomo was in the attempted

53:39

response and ultimately cover up

53:41

of some of Andrew Cuomo's bad behavior,

53:44

especially with regards to a number

53:46

of the women who were coming forward and alleging

53:49

either harassment or outright sexual

53:51

assault. Let's go ahead and throw this tweet

53:53

up on the screen. This is from our friend Brian

53:55

Schwartz over at CNBC. He says, CNN

53:57

host Chris Cuomo used his sources

54:00

is to get info on brother Andrew

54:02

Cuomo's accusers. He also engaged

54:04

with sources to get a read on upcoming

54:07

stories that took aim at his brother.

54:10

I have a lead on the wedding girl, Cuomo

54:12

texted Top eight at the time, Melissa

54:15

DeRosa, and there is a lot

54:17

more than this, so they He was

54:20

texting Durosa saying, please let me help

54:22

with prep as Andrew

54:24

Cuomo is having to respond to these repeated

54:26

allegations. Then he texts

54:28

her and says, I have a lead on the wedding girl.

54:30

That's in reference to someone who alleged

54:33

misconduct at a wedding. CNN

54:35

issue a comment. So, first, first off, they

54:38

didn't say anything about it. They declined to comment,

54:40

But then as more and more media

54:43

outlets, including The Washington Post, I'm including

54:45

a lot of sort of top flight elite media

54:47

type places, started to run the story.

54:50

They ultimately issued a comment hours

54:52

after the publication of the initial articles saying

54:55

that the news organization would be reviewing

54:57

the documents. The thousands of pages of additional

54:59

transg and exhibits that were released today by

55:01

the New York Attorney General deserve a thorough

55:03

review and consideration. CNN spokesman

55:05

Matt Dornick said, we will be having conversations

55:08

and seeking additional clarity about their significance

55:10

as they relate to CNN over the next

55:13

several days. Some of the additional

55:15

information that has just come out is

55:17

also centering around Ronan.

55:19

Ferroll was writing a piece about some

55:22

of the accusers, and Chris

55:24

Cuomo was trying to use his media

55:26

contacts within the industry to

55:28

figure out what does Ronan have, how

55:31

many women? When's the story going to

55:33

drop? So actually using

55:35

his sort of professional network

55:38

that he has gained in part as

55:40

being this high level host at

55:42

CNN in order to

55:44

help his brother, the governor

55:47

of New York. Of course, at a time when he's

55:49

having his brother on and you know, doing

55:52

their little Dog and Pony show about swabbing

55:55

the nose and having a grand old time

55:57

dur back when his brother was a co

56:00

hero. I think it's totally nuts. And

56:02

I know it may be tiresome or whatever to

56:04

hear us talk about it, but this is the most

56:06

concrete example of the

56:08

intertwinement between the

56:11

people in power the people who are supposed

56:13

to cover them. I mean Cuomo

56:15

himself. Chris Cuomo opened his show last

56:18

night and did not address this. CNN allowed

56:20

him to go on the air after

56:23

this was revealed, which is unbelievable,

56:25

and look like at one point he

56:28

was talking to Melissa de Rosa, the

56:30

governor secretary, via text, saying

56:33

quote, you need to trust me. We

56:35

are making mistakes we cannot afford,

56:38

and then intimately involved with Melissa

56:40

in digging up dirt on some

56:42

of the accusers. He said, you know, I think we

56:44

have a lead on so and so. But

56:47

he was talking with his

56:49

sources. I mean, what they point to

56:52

is that Cuomo, we already know he helped

56:55

draft a reply or draft a

56:58

statement from Andrew Cuomo denying the

57:00

accusation that alone is already

57:02

a complete breach, and yet we heard, oh,

57:04

he's his brother. I mean you wouldn't you know, who wouldn't

57:07

do that. This is way worse using

57:09

your contacts from the job that you have

57:11

at a news organization in order

57:13

to try and dig up dirt on the women accusing

57:16

your governor brother of sexual assault.

57:18

It is outright corruption. The fact

57:20

that CNN did not take him off the

57:22

air and immediately fire him is

57:25

outrageous. And we were talking about this, Crystal.

57:27

There's no way in hell that Chris Cuomo told

57:29

the truth to Jeff Zucker and CNN. He probably

57:31

was like he didn't think his tax were going to come out, right,

57:34

He's like, ah, you know, hell yeah, he's my

57:36

brother. High help. Yeah,

57:38

I had a phone call or talk to my brother.

57:40

Yeah, exactly what. We're not going to talk to my brother.

57:43

He's family. You know. They like to remind us

57:45

of that all the time whenever they were on the show together.

57:47

You put all that together, That is not what happened

57:50

here. This was deep in the

57:52

weeds helping orchestrate a campaign

57:54

of smears against the women who were accusing

57:56

Andrew Cuomo. And it also goes to show

57:59

how long it's been happen. Okay, we only

58:01

know the texts whenever it comes to this, did

58:03

he help him on COVID messaging? Did he help him

58:05

on COVID policy? We know that he had him on his show,

58:08

What about before that? I've played

58:10

it here before. Chris Cuomo has been having

58:12

his brother on his network since his

58:14

time at ABC News. How

58:16

long have they been in codes together in

58:18

order to help his brother's political career

58:21

in the state of New York. This could just be the tip

58:23

of the iceberg. I really think it is. We've talked

58:25

about this. Look sexual

58:27

assault stuff on Cuomo. Yeah, look,

58:29

it's bad, but I personally

58:31

think what he did, which was way worse,

58:34

was sentenced to death by accident,

58:36

but still sentenced nonetheless thousands

58:39

of elderly people in nursing homes through his policy

58:41

using the liability shield and shielding

58:44

these nursing companies from

58:46

any liability from the families of those

58:48

from the people who had victims, and then

58:50

even worse, covering up COVID

58:53

debts and more from his office in the state

58:55

of New York so that to avoid federal scrutiny.

58:57

And on top of that, profiting millions of dollars off

58:59

the book outright abusive office,

59:01

a terrible decision, and he never apologized

59:03

to the American people. No, it's disgusting. And

59:05

then to learn that, you know, I mean,

59:08

it's a low bar. But Chris Cuomo has

59:10

the highest rated show on

59:13

the failing that CNN network, and

59:16

he's very influential. Oh yeah, he's close.

59:18

Reportedly they're close buddies with Jeff Zucker,

59:21

who runs better book of course, and

59:23

so the way they've handled this it's

59:25

just, I mean, there's no

59:27

way to spin it other than just they

59:29

like him and he gets good ratings, so they're going to look

59:31

the other way almost no matter what. You know,

59:34

this is the first time I really have seen them

59:36

feel even pressure enough

59:38

to have to say anything about

59:41

what was going on with Chris Cuomo. Oftentimes,

59:44

when these stories come out, they just they don't

59:46

comment. They dismiss it. They say, we've already

59:48

said what we want to say on that. So for

59:50

Cuomo to go and do his show last night and

59:52

not say a word, I mean, it

59:55

really boggles my mind. Because we

59:58

don't have bosses, but if there were something

1:00:00

that was like this big that was swirling

1:00:02

about us. Of course we tell you

1:00:04

what was going on. That's just like basic

1:00:08

character to be. I'd be

1:00:10

like, look, guys, here's the deal. You

1:00:12

know, yeah, like here's what they all truth.

1:00:14

Your eyes screwed up in this way. I mean like

1:00:17

at a certain point you got to own it, like this is

1:00:20

wildly inappropriate

1:00:22

and unethical. And remember when Brian Stelter

1:00:24

went on what was it, Jimmen or something, Colbert

1:00:27

Colbert, I think, yeah, and he was like, wow,

1:00:30

this is so complic I think, crazy

1:00:32

situation. It's a crazy situation. Complex

1:00:36

of interests happen all the time. There's

1:00:39

a very clear playbook for how you handle

1:00:41

it, and this ain't it. It's not

1:00:43

a close call, so it's pretty

1:00:45

wild. The other detail here that's that's

1:00:48

pretty interesting, is

1:00:50

you know, of course he says Chris Cuomo

1:00:52

that, oh, you didn't even think about the conflict.

1:00:55

He was just thinking about his family, and I was just

1:00:57

thinking, here's this literal quote. His almost

1:00:59

the only focus he said was quote, how do

1:01:01

I protect my family? How do I help protect

1:01:03

him? Probably should have been thinking more about how

1:01:05

I protect myself, which just never occurred

1:01:08

to me. So he's casting himself. It's like, oh, he's

1:01:10

just so selfless. It was just helping us,

1:01:12

It's right.

1:01:14

But then they catch him in

1:01:16

these texts telling Melissa Durosa

1:01:19

again the top aid to quote

1:01:21

delete this thread now, also

1:01:23

indicating he knew this wasn't

1:01:26

okay. You knew this was not okay. And

1:01:28

also one other just little detail here that's kind of

1:01:30

funny, is Liz Smith. Apparently

1:01:34

she makes a cameo here. I assume it's the same

1:01:36

Lismith, and he was spelled well. They don't never specify.

1:01:38

They just say that she was like an outside advisor and

1:01:42

she was the one actor in all

1:01:44

of this that Melissa de Rosa was like, we're

1:01:47

just going to stay the course and take

1:01:49

go hard on these allegations, and Liz

1:01:51

is like, well that's what you've been doing and it hasn't

1:01:53

been working out well. So anyway, just

1:01:56

shows you how these networks, how these

1:01:59

circles run. That top

1:02:01

Pete Boodage advisor Liz Smith also

1:02:03

involved in the Cuomo in Berglio

1:02:05

classic. All

1:02:08

right, Zachery, you looll get at well. Longtime

1:02:11

listeners will tire of hearing me say this, but I think

1:02:13

it bears repeating over and over again. The

1:02:15

most pernicious form of media bias that exists

1:02:18

is not what they choose to show you. What they choose

1:02:20

not to show you, selective coverage, selective

1:02:22

outrage. It breeds the taste that cares

1:02:25

the attention of the ruling class and the conditions

1:02:27

of millions of people who watch cable news

1:02:29

to look at politics in the way

1:02:31

that is shaped from above. That is

1:02:34

why I am truly puzzled at the current lack

1:02:36

of media coverage and of the recent

1:02:38

Christmas parade massacre in Wakesha,

1:02:40

Wisconsin, where six victims

1:02:42

ranging from an eight year old boy to an eighty

1:02:45

one year old man, were mowed down by

1:02:47

Daryl Brooks Junior. Now we knew shortly

1:02:49

after the crime was committed mister Brooks was

1:02:51

released on bail that the district attorney

1:02:54

that Milwaukee said that should never have

1:02:56

been granted in the first place, and that he's a

1:02:58

long time violent felon, and

1:03:00

then well, it kind of just disappeared.

1:03:02

It seemed like all reporting and inquiry into him

1:03:05

just vanished, and not just vanished when it

1:03:07

was reported, his name was kept out of the

1:03:09

media. Weirdly, both Washington

1:03:11

Posts and CNN posting stories

1:03:13

that say from CNN quote Lakesha

1:03:16

will hold a moment of silence today, marking

1:03:18

one week since a car drove through a city Christmas

1:03:20

preve and from the Washington Post quote,

1:03:22

here's what we know so far on the sequence of events

1:03:24

that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused

1:03:26

by an suv. Hmm, a

1:03:29

car in an suv. They just did it out of nowhere.

1:03:31

Huh. Look, let's be honest. They

1:03:33

are afraid of making this racial, but it

1:03:35

is not their job to assess it either

1:03:37

way. It's just a report on the facts.

1:03:40

And when you look a little deeper into mister Brooks,

1:03:42

it does not paint a one dimensional portrait.

1:03:44

Okay. Brooks apparently has a very

1:03:46

long and bizarre posting history, which

1:03:48

includes sympathy with the black Hebrew

1:03:50

Israelites, anti Semitic memes,

1:03:53

and including admiration for Hitler.

1:03:55

He bragged in the past about calling himself

1:03:57

a terrorist and in some of his old videos

1:04:00

a quote killer in the city, and he generally

1:04:02

seemed to revel in anarchy of the George

1:04:05

Floyd protests, posting incendiary

1:04:07

updates around wishing violence towards

1:04:09

some whites. In general, he seems

1:04:11

like a violent, off kilter loser

1:04:13

with the social media history to back all

1:04:15

of that up, and perhaps that points

1:04:18

to the motive. But the problem with our media

1:04:20

is their selective coverage. Lack of coverage

1:04:22

of these incidents leads to the correct

1:04:24

assumption by many people in this country

1:04:27

that when violence is perpetrated by people whose

1:04:29

ideas are at least tangentially linked

1:04:31

to those in the media and the people institutional

1:04:33

left agree with, then it's okay justified.

1:04:36

Ignored memory hold it leads worse

1:04:38

to a mindset that if the other side can get away

1:04:41

with violence, or at the very least avoid the national

1:04:43

reckoning that seems to follow any violence

1:04:45

tangentially tied to the right, that perhaps even

1:04:47

more violence is than justified. Getting

1:04:50

out of this Hella situation is the Gordian

1:04:52

Knot of today's politics, and it requires

1:04:54

doing what I am doing just now. Just tell

1:04:56

the truth, tell people what happened. So

1:04:58

let's continue on to tip top of mister Daryl

1:05:00

brooks bizarre social media presence. Here's

1:05:02

what else that we know about him. Brooks

1:05:05

was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression

1:05:07

at age eleven. When he was growing up in

1:05:09

Milwaukee, his father was an alcoholic,

1:05:12

and he grew up in an abusive environment surrounded

1:05:14

by drugs. He began committing crimes

1:05:16

as early as age seventeen. He was charged

1:05:18

for battery, and then he was in and out of prison

1:05:20

and in trouble with the law across three different

1:05:23

states, including sexual abuse of a

1:05:25

minor. He appears to have had a long

1:05:27

problem with methamphetamine use and has

1:05:29

been charged on and off many times with gun

1:05:31

charges and a recent attempt at killing people

1:05:34

in a fight with the car. Now, as to

1:05:36

the crime itself, here's actually where things get

1:05:38

kind of strange. Around four thirty pm

1:05:40

last Sunday, Wilkesha police were called

1:05:42

to a domestic disturbance between Brooks

1:05:44

and one of his ex girlfriends. It was after

1:05:47

this domestic disturbance Brooks barreled

1:05:49

his car into the Christmas parade with the video

1:05:51

that you've all seen. As of yet, there

1:05:54

is still no motive. Was this somebody

1:05:56

who had completely snapped? Was he planning

1:05:58

it all along? So far he's been with

1:06:00

intentional homicide. Perhaps there is evidence

1:06:02

that we are not aware of yet from the police

1:06:05

about a so called premeditated crime.

1:06:07

As for Brooks, victims six have died

1:06:09

so far, all of whose debts who've been charged

1:06:11

with. Seven children remain in the hospital

1:06:14

as of Sunday, three in serious condition,

1:06:16

three in fair condition, one in good condition.

1:06:19

Two others were released from the hospital before the weekend.

1:06:21

And at least the great side of this is that two million

1:06:24

dollars have been raised so far on GoFundMe to

1:06:26

support the victims, a link to which we

1:06:28

will include in the description of this video. That's

1:06:30

what we know. It's really not hard to do all of

1:06:32

this, and it says a lot about the current state of our

1:06:34

media that they selectively cover which crimes

1:06:37

they'll amplify and which they don't. It's

1:06:39

actually an acknowledgement on their part that coverage

1:06:41

itself can drive a lot of the way that people

1:06:43

think about current events, what should be done

1:06:45

and what shouldn't be. But it highlights

1:06:47

also that in the long run, these people cannot

1:06:50

win. Not saying corporate media won't

1:06:52

be around forever, but you know, twenty years

1:06:54

ago, we didn't even have the Internet to at least revel

1:06:56

so much of what they're doing or not covering.

1:06:58

We did not have shows like this one.

1:07:00

Right now, most Americans have the means

1:07:03

if they so choose to seek out

1:07:05

some information for themselves. Is

1:07:07

why the battles of the future are over who controls

1:07:09

these alternative flows of information. I

1:07:12

choose to believe people are smart enough to

1:07:14

decipher information and interpret it for themselves,

1:07:16

no matter what the facts may be. And while

1:07:19

things are bleak right now, I do think that eventually,

1:07:21

at least I hope so, they will get better. And

1:07:23

that's really what annoyed me, Cristal. I've seen

1:07:25

a lot of people online point this out

1:07:28

as well. They just want to know what was going

1:07:30

on. And if you want to hear my reaction

1:07:32

to Sagre's monologue, become a premium subscriber

1:07:35

today at Breakingpoints dot com. Crystal,

1:07:39

what are you taking a look at? Well? Guys? Back

1:07:42

when Hillary Clinton was in the midst of her doomed

1:07:44

run for resident, her communications director

1:07:46

coined a lament that they would employ every

1:07:48

time the campaign inevitably crashed

1:07:50

into the rocks over and over again. Quote,

1:07:53

we are not allowed to have nice things, they

1:07:55

would say. After a pandemic and an economic

1:07:58

crash collided with a completely toxic political

1:08:00

atmosphere and tribal news media seemingly intent

1:08:02

on making everything worse. It is a sentiment that

1:08:04

much of the American public could likely relate to

1:08:07

while watching Hillary this week make her not

1:08:09

so triumphant return to the racial Matdow

1:08:11

conspiracy Hour. It really hit me from

1:08:14

a political perspective. There is maybe

1:08:16

no one in the entire country more to blame

1:08:19

for offering the current trash state of our

1:08:21

politics than one Hillary Rodham

1:08:23

Clinton, certainly with regards

1:08:25

to the trash state of the Democratic Party.

1:08:28

You see, it didn't have to be this way. We

1:08:30

didn't have to be trapped in a hellish invented discourse

1:08:32

about misinformation and disinformation. We

1:08:35

didn't have to spend the last four years of media resources

1:08:37

and public attention chasing down and down

1:08:39

increasingly insane Russian conspiracies.

1:08:42

Democrats didn't have to double down on the same

1:08:44

elitism and policy and adequacy that

1:08:46

led to their electoral decimation. We

1:08:48

didn't have to be stuck with a Reagan era neo

1:08:50

lberal relic as president that only

1:08:52

seems good when you compare him either to Trump

1:08:55

or to the supposed dream team of Kamala

1:08:57

Harris and Pete Boodage that were apparently being threatened

1:08:59

with. So what the hell happened?

1:09:02

We'll brace yourself because I want to play a little clip

1:09:04

from the Mattow HRC interview so

1:09:06

we can begin to explore how we ended

1:09:08

up in such a maddening and terrible place.

1:09:11

So Rachel asked Hillary about a recent Atlantic

1:09:14

piece arguing that liberal democracy is eroding

1:09:16

an autocracy is on the rise. Here's

1:09:18

a portion of how Hillary responded. Because

1:09:21

I do think that we are facing

1:09:25

a crisis of democracy,

1:09:28

crisis of legitimacy, a

1:09:30

crisis that really goes to the heart of

1:09:33

what the future of our country

1:09:36

and many others around the world

1:09:38

will be. So I

1:09:40

spend my time trying to figure

1:09:42

out what we can do about

1:09:44

it, and I am not

1:09:47

ever going to give up, because there's

1:09:49

just too much at stake. But

1:09:52

first and foremost, we have to make

1:09:54

sure more people besides people

1:09:56

like you, me An Applebaum and others

1:09:59

who share our concerns

1:10:02

see what we see, because

1:10:04

I think that the role of

1:10:06

disinformation, the way that

1:10:08

propaganda has been really weaponized,

1:10:11

and the increasing ability

1:10:13

to manipulate people through algorithms

1:10:16

and other forms of artificial intelligence

1:10:20

will only make this harder to

1:10:22

combat. Now,

1:10:24

Rachel asked former Secretary

1:10:26

Clinton a question that could have led to any number

1:10:28

of places. You might explore the rot

1:10:31

of neoliberalism, which has failed to deliver for millions

1:10:33

of people, creating vast gulfs of inequality

1:10:36

that have left desperate people searching for easy

1:10:38

answers. In Strong Men, you could discuss

1:10:40

the huge refugee flows triggered by war

1:10:42

and by climate change that made it easy for natives

1:10:45

to scapegoat immigrants and promise a return

1:10:47

to past glory. You could talk about

1:10:49

the collapse of traditional centers of meaning, from

1:10:51

community to church to family, the degrading

1:10:54

of every human being into nothing more than their worth

1:10:56

as a consumer. But for Hillary Clinton,

1:10:58

the problem is not a of that, it's

1:11:01

social media companies, misinformation

1:11:03

and disinformation. She would go on to

1:11:05

bring up the same topic over and

1:11:08

over again, often unprompted, throughout

1:11:10

this entire interview. Now, in fairness,

1:11:12

Hillary should know a thing or two about misinformation,

1:11:15

because ever since the moment she lost her

1:11:17

election and doomed us all to four terrible

1:11:19

years under Donald Trump, she has been running

1:11:21

a very successful propaganda

1:11:23

campaign to convince the public that our biggest

1:11:25

problem is in fact misinformation, and

1:11:28

that the answer to this problem lies in handing

1:11:30

more power over to people like Hillary

1:11:32

Clinton. I mean this, by the way, very

1:11:35

literally. In Jonathan Allen and Amy Parton's

1:11:37

book Shattered, they actually detail how

1:11:39

Clinton and her team plotted to

1:11:41

deflect, blame, and spin their loss

1:11:44

how else, by blaming Russian

1:11:46

misinformation. Here's the quote.

1:11:48

In calls with advisors and political surrogates

1:11:51

in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take

1:11:53

responsibility for her own loss. Quote.

1:11:55

She's not being particularly self reflective,

1:11:57

said one longtime ally who was on calls

1:11:59

with her after the election. Instead,

1:12:01

Hillary kept pointing her finger at Komi and

1:12:04

Russia. She wants to make sure

1:12:06

all these narratives get spun the right

1:12:08

way. This person said that strategy

1:12:10

had been set within twenty four hours

1:12:12

of her concession speech. Now,

1:12:15

muk and Podesta assembled her comms

1:12:17

team and at their Brooklyn headquarters

1:12:19

to engineer the case that the election was not entirely

1:12:21

on the up and up. For a couple of hours,

1:12:24

with shakeshat containers littering the room, they

1:12:26

went over the script they would pitch to the press

1:12:28

and the public. Already, Russian hacking

1:12:30

was the centerpiece of the argument. In Brooklyn,

1:12:33

her team coalesced around the idea that Russian

1:12:35

hacking was the major unreported story

1:12:37

of the campaign, overshadowed by

1:12:39

the contents of stolen emails and Hilly's

1:12:41

Hillary's own private server in broglio,

1:12:45

And as far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, the plan

1:12:47

to quote make sure all these narratives get

1:12:49

spun the right way, Well, that's gone exceedingly

1:12:51

well, hasn't it. To use the language of the

1:12:53

newly created discourse, they very effectively

1:12:56

weaponize misinformation to convince

1:12:58

the media and the Democratic base that the biggest

1:13:00

national problem was in fact misinformation. Roberr

1:13:03

head around that one. Now Here we are five

1:13:05

years later, and rather than do a single moment of

1:13:07

soul searching about how the Democratic Party could possibly

1:13:10

have lost to someone like Donald Trump, Reland

1:13:12

ever considered that maybe they should stop running

1:13:14

candidates who look like they'd be more comfortable in a modicle

1:13:17

and a top at Reland actually try

1:13:19

to figure out what the real concerns and issues

1:13:21

are for voters. They have instead leveraged all

1:13:23

of their messaging and institutional muscle

1:13:25

to fret over what moms are saying in

1:13:28

boomer Facebook groups. Of course,

1:13:30

every liberal media outlet totally obsessed

1:13:32

with the topic too. Ben Smith's recent column

1:13:34

exposes how top executives at Sanate,

1:13:37

NBC News, the ap, Axios,

1:13:40

and other major US outlets they've been

1:13:42

dialing into Zoom meetings led by

1:13:44

Harvard Schorenstein Center on Media

1:13:46

to learn how to combat misinformation.

1:13:49

Katie Kirk just led an Aspen Institute

1:13:52

Commission on Information Disorder,

1:13:54

among other luminaries like Facebook's

1:13:56

former chief security officer, Kremlin

1:13:59

critic and Gary kay Asparov, and Prince

1:14:01

Harry. For some reason, Ben Smith

1:14:04

himself moderated a quote Truth the

1:14:06

k panel at Bloomberg's New Economy

1:14:08

Forum. Now, all of these elite actors,

1:14:10

from the democratic politicians, the media executives,

1:14:12

they love this topic. It's perfect. It doesn't

1:14:15

implicate them at all, doesn't require them

1:14:17

to give up any of their goodies, and best of all,

1:14:19

it hands them even more power as

1:14:22

gatekeepers and official arbiters of the

1:14:24

truth. After all, the previous

1:14:26

controllers of the narrative were feeling a little nervous

1:14:28

that the people might be getting ideas of their

1:14:30

own and straying from the prescribed program.

1:14:33

Legacy media didn't have to be pushed all that hard

1:14:35

to embrace the agenda of crushing

1:14:37

misinformation. Coming from the people in

1:14:39

order to regain their own elite monopoly

1:14:42

on misinformation only high

1:14:44

class propaganda and conspiracy theories please

1:14:47

things like Russia Gate and WMD's

1:14:49

and the idea that the stock market is real. So

1:14:52

insummation our current hell world

1:14:54

of demands for more censorship, lesser evil

1:14:56

politics, and a perplexing inability

1:14:58

of the Democratic Party to ad us a single

1:15:00

real Conservative voters that was

1:15:02

all set in motion by HRC

1:15:05

it's thanks to an intentional plot hatched

1:15:08

by Hillary and her paid operatives to

1:15:10

distract the public from their terrible campaign

1:15:12

and their even worse candidate, a

1:15:14

sigh up which she continues to this very

1:15:17

day on one of the most influential political

1:15:19

shows out there. And that, my friends,

1:15:21

is why we are not allowed to have

1:15:23

nice things, sager. Hillary

1:15:26

really ran the gamut in that interview. She also made

1:15:28

sure to get in some like warhawkish stuff

1:15:30

on afghanisty and

1:15:32

if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's

1:15:35

monologue, become a premium subscriber today at

1:15:37

Breakingpoints dot Com. Joining

1:15:41

us now is a Brad Wilcox of the

1:15:43

American Enterprise Institute. Longtime

1:15:45

friend somebody I found really interesting. Wrote

1:15:48

a new piece here. Let's put it up there on the

1:15:50

screen, how liberals can be happier.

1:15:53

Found it pretty interesting, Brad. We

1:15:55

promise it's not a culture war segment. Just

1:15:57

welcome to the show. Tell us about what

1:15:59

you think here, what do you what are

1:16:01

you guys laying out in this piece? You

1:16:04

know, we'll stalk. What we see in the research over and over

1:16:06

again is that conservatives tend to be happier

1:16:08

on average and liberals. And we

1:16:11

wanted to kind of look at what's going on here. And there are

1:16:13

some scholars who think it's about the way

1:16:15

in which consertives might be more happy with

1:16:17

inequality or more comfortable, you know, sort

1:16:19

of the way things are basically, but it turns

1:16:21

out that's actually not what explains this gap

1:16:24

between conservatisms. Actually sort of how

1:16:26

connected these two groups are

1:16:28

to our core institutions in America, things

1:16:31

like you know, family, faith,

1:16:33

and community. And once we look

1:16:35

at those factors in our

1:16:37

regression models, we find that those

1:16:39

are the things that help to kind of explain

1:16:42

the gap. In fact, liberals who are

1:16:44

married with kids, who are happy

1:16:46

with their families, who are engaged in the religious

1:16:48

communities, who are you know, civically

1:16:51

involved. These are

1:16:53

the liberals who are more likely both men

1:16:55

and women to be happy. So there's

1:16:57

a kind of basically a path to happiness

1:16:59

that run through our core American

1:17:01

institutions for both conservatives and for

1:17:04

liberals. I thought the piece

1:17:06

was really interesting, and as you point

1:17:08

out, I mean, this is data is pretty consistent

1:17:10

over time that concern. I mean, this is

1:17:12

something I'm about for a while that conservitives tend to be

1:17:14

happier. I always bought into the ideas because

1:17:17

hey, they're more comfortable with the status

1:17:19

quo. So liberals are sort of angsting over

1:17:21

whatever's going on in the world, and we might count myself

1:17:23

in that camp. The part

1:17:25

of it that I guess I had a big question

1:17:28

about is if religion is a big

1:17:30

part of this, Like that's for me not

1:17:32

really an answer because I can't make myself

1:17:34

believe something that I don't ultimately believe. So

1:17:37

there are sort of substitutes for a

1:17:39

formal church religion experience

1:17:42

that exist in modern America.

1:17:45

Yeah, saga, Chris, So I think there is a

1:17:47

story here in the data that's about also

1:17:50

kind of community life as well. And

1:17:52

so what we see in the research with

1:17:54

this UGUV survey is that liberal

1:17:56

women, for instance, like yourself, who

1:17:59

are kind of set us with their community engagement.

1:18:01

That could be you know, the local school PTO. It

1:18:03

could be you know, being involved in

1:18:05

you know, some kind of athletic

1:18:07

group with your kids, whatever. If you're kind

1:18:10

of engaged in your community in that kind of way,

1:18:12

that seems to kind of deliver also

1:18:15

a high level of or high level

1:18:17

of happiness for women. So

1:18:19

let me ask you a more philosophical

1:18:21

question, why does happiness matter as

1:18:24

a society? Like can we look

1:18:26

at and this is what you guys do at the

1:18:28

family studies in the issue for family

1:18:30

studies, what is good

1:18:33

outcomes? Or I guess what outcomes

1:18:35

which I might consider good are correlated

1:18:37

with happiness for the general population.

1:18:41

Well, you know, saga we see in the research

1:18:43

is that these kinds of outcomes tend

1:18:46

to cluster together in terms of things like happiness,

1:18:48

anxiety, and depression. And

1:18:50

as both of you are aware, we've seen a big spike

1:18:53

in America recently in deaths of despair,

1:18:55

you know, which is sort of one manifestation of

1:18:58

people kind of losing a sense of purpose direction,

1:19:01

and also of course happiness oftentimes as

1:19:03

well, and so you know, the

1:19:05

story here in part two is that Americans

1:19:08

who are able to forge ties you know, in marriage

1:19:11

forged ties and religious community or forged

1:19:13

ties and some kind of secular local

1:19:15

civil institution are much more

1:19:17

likely to be kind of flourishing across the board.

1:19:20

And happiness is just kind of one indicator

1:19:22

of that flourishing. And so I think we need to

1:19:24

be thinking about how we're doing as a country

1:19:27

and encouraging you know, Americans to

1:19:29

plug into these core social institutions

1:19:31

today. I mean, that's

1:19:33

actually, in its way a provocative

1:19:35

and radical notion in this country, especially

1:19:38

over the past forty years since the Reagan

1:19:40

era, where the priority has really been around profit

1:19:43

machanisimization. You know, jobs

1:19:45

were shipped overseas as long as it was going to up

1:19:47

GDP by a couple of percentage points.

1:19:50

And pushing back against that notion

1:19:52

of just the free market is the only thing we should

1:19:55

care about is actually a value more

1:19:57

associated with the left at this point. So as

1:19:59

someone who comes from a more conservative perspective,

1:20:02

are there sort of economic policy implications

1:20:05

or any sort of policy implications that come

1:20:07

with a focus and a prioritization

1:20:10

of happiness as a nation, which frankly

1:20:12

is just not something that we've really focused on

1:20:14

for a long time. Well,

1:20:16

Chrystal, I think in terms of thinking about economic policy,

1:20:19

you need to do a much better job of

1:20:21

making it easier for Americans

1:20:24

who don't have a college degree and

1:20:26

are not on the college track to flourish

1:20:28

both in school and in

1:20:31

the labor force. And so one concrete

1:20:33

idea, for instance, would be to have a wage subsidy,

1:20:35

and that would also kind of push us in the direction

1:20:38

of a kind of family wage. That would be kind of one way

1:20:40

of kind of making an economic

1:20:42

policy more family friendly. So

1:20:44

that would be sort of one example of

1:20:46

the kind of policy measure I'd also

1:20:49

would want to stress too, the

1:20:51

ways in which currently are are means system

1:20:53

programs like Medicaid, for instance, end

1:20:55

up penalizing marriage for working class

1:20:58

families with kids, making it more

1:21:00

are you know, financially difficult to

1:21:02

you know, to get married,

1:21:04

And so I think we could also think about ways to eliminate

1:21:07

that marriage penalty embedded

1:21:09

in our mean sessted programs like Medicaid

1:21:12

for instance. And what about rethinking

1:21:14

our approach and

1:21:17

framework work with regards to trade, because

1:21:19

one of the things that has decimated so many

1:21:22

communities and as far as people out of where

1:21:24

they grew up is you know, there's no

1:21:26

jobs left there. So the factory that was there when

1:21:28

their parents or grandparents that they had a stable

1:21:30

middle class life able to support a family

1:21:33

that's now gone away. So their implications

1:21:35

there as well. Yeah,

1:21:37

as you know, I mean, David author and MIT has

1:21:39

found that the China trade truck was

1:21:41

linked to the loss of about two million jobs

1:21:44

in America and that in turn was linked

1:21:46

to market declients in marriage and marketing

1:21:48

creases in single parenthods. So you know, we

1:21:50

have to think about how our trade policies

1:21:53

and how our public policies more generally

1:21:55

do or do not foster good

1:21:58

paying jobs for ordinary Americans. That's

1:22:00

certainly also kind of a policy issue

1:22:02

to keep on the agenda for thinking

1:22:04

about ordinary families across the

1:22:07

US. Yeah, and then you know the last

1:22:09

thing I have here, Brad, which is, you know, I've been a fan of

1:22:11

this and I excited David's paper here on the show

1:22:13

in the past as well. But beyond you

1:22:15

know, the general policy implication, the

1:22:18

mindset shift has to happen. Do

1:22:20

you see that happening within the institutional

1:22:22

right, or is it still just a very nascent

1:22:24

movement, you

1:22:27

know, Saga. I do see among younger

1:22:29

conservatives a dramatic kind of

1:22:31

rethinking about the sort of character

1:22:33

of public policy, and

1:22:36

sort of they're thinking about economics as

1:22:38

well. So there's a much greater concern about thinking

1:22:40

through policies that would

1:22:42

sort of shore up the economic

1:22:45

fortunes of working in middle class

1:22:47

families as we go forward. Now, of course,

1:22:49

there are still I think, you know, many older conservatives

1:22:52

you know, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, who haven't

1:22:54

kind of made that shift, But

1:22:57

there's certainly a real openness, and the

1:22:59

part of younger concern is to rethinking account

1:23:01

of policy with an eye towards strengthening American

1:23:03

families. Yeah, I would hope. So, Brad

1:23:06

really appreciate your analysis work

1:23:08

all of that. Will put links down in the description to

1:23:11

look at some of brad works. I've cited many

1:23:13

of your studies here in my monologues.

1:23:15

I find the work invaluable. So we really appreciate you joining

1:23:18

us. Thank you, Yeah, fascinating stuff. Thank you, Brad, Thanks

1:23:20

chys, Thanks learn absolutely, thank

1:23:23

you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate

1:23:25

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1:24:18

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