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Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty

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But enough with that, let's get to the showing.

0:41

Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We

0:43

have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

0:46

Indeed, we do lots of interesting stories breaking

0:48

this morning. So first of all, we have a poll that has

0:51

really set DC on fire, that has

0:53

Trump up by ten on

0:55

Joe Biden. So we'll break that down for you.

0:58

How much stocks should you put in it? With a reaction and

1:00

all of that, we'll get into that. We also have President

1:02

Biden doing something that we don't think any US president

1:05

has ever done before, which is heading to the

1:07

picket line in support of auto

1:09

workers into Detroit, So we'll break

1:11

that down for you. We have I

1:13

can't even believe in saying this words, Canada

1:16

honoring a legitimate Ukrainian

1:19

Nazi, Yes, longtime Lensky from

1:21

World War Two alongside Zelenski.

1:23

A lot to reckon with there. We've also got

1:26

update on that centaer Bob Menandez

1:28

who was entitled for cartoonish corruption. He

1:31

has a real excuse for why everyone is turning

1:33

on.

1:33

It couldn't have been.

1:33

The gold bar statue in closet, Sager.

1:37

It's his identity. They're persecuting him.

1:39

It's all wildly unfair, so we'll get into all

1:41

of that. We also have boomers

1:43

apparently the only ones who are watching TV at

1:46

this point. It's some very interesting content being developed

1:48

to cater to that audience. But before we

1:50

get to any of that, this is also a debate week,

1:52

so we've got some special coverage plan.

1:53

We've got very special coverage plan. We're going to do a very

1:55

similar format for everybody, a preview, a breakdown,

1:58

We're going to our power panel back all of that,

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Not only that, we're doing all this on the ground stuff

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2:24

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2:26

yeah, just in particular and other incentive

2:28

to do so. Right with that, let's get to

2:30

the poll. This poll has a.

2:32

Right for the poll. We had breaking

2:34

news this to morning, right.

2:35

So the writer strike that has been

2:37

ongoing in Hollywood, put this up on the screen for

2:40

one hundred and forty six days. Looks

2:43

like it may be coming to a close.

2:45

They have reached a tentative agreement.

2:48

This you see on the one side of your screen

2:50

is an email that went out to all Writers'

2:53

Guild members. They say, we've reached a tentative

2:55

agreement on a new twenty twenty three MBA, which

2:58

is to say, an agreement in principle on all

3:00

deal points, subject to drafting final contract

3:02

language. That deal, of course, will have to

3:04

go to a vote for the membership. They will have

3:06

to approve whatever has been agreed to. Here you

3:09

also have some comments here.

3:10

We did it.

3:10

We have a tentative deal. Over the coming days, we'll discuss

3:13

and vote on it together as a democratic union.

3:15

But today I want to thank every single WGA

3:17

member and every fellow worker who stood

3:19

with us in solidarity. You made

3:21

this possible. We don't have a lot

3:24

of details yet about what is contained

3:26

in this deal. According to New York Times,

3:28

they said that the writers were able

3:31

to achieve much of what they had demanded, including

3:33

increases in compensation for streaming content

3:35

that was a really critical one, concessions

3:37

from studios on minimum staffing for TV

3:39

shows, guarantees that AI

3:42

tech will not encroach on writers

3:44

credits and compensation, and

3:47

that, apparently Sager was sort of the biggest sticking

3:49

point at the end of the negotiations because,

3:51

I mean, it's kind of understandable since the

3:53

technology is so new and the

3:55

contours of what it's going to mean so undefined

3:58

at this point, that was the piece that they had

4:01

the biggest trouble coming to an agreement

4:03

with. You know, this thing looked like it was

4:05

going to go on forever. There was no movement

4:07

for a long time. Apparently Bob Eyer from Disney

4:10

got involved, and that helped bring the parties back to

4:12

the table and they were able to negotiate.

4:14

This deal comes at a critical juncture,

4:16

as you saw, you know, some cracks beginning to

4:18

emerge, Drew Barrymore, Bill Maher, others planning

4:21

to go back and then facing backlash and deciding

4:23

all right, we're going to hold off. We're not going to restart

4:25

our shows. But it created kind of a dangerous

4:27

situation because if you had a lot of

4:29

these shows begin to go back on air, that

4:31

obviously would have dramatically undercut the negotiating

4:34

leverage of the writers.

4:36

So exciting to see this.

4:37

You still have the actors out, so Hollywood continues

4:39

to be in sort of partial shutdown mode. But this

4:41

is a big development and we'll see what the membership thinks of it.

4:43

That's right.

4:44

Yeah.

4:44

The next step is that the membership themselves have to vote.

4:46

So they've got eleven thousand or so people who members

4:49

of the guild who will vote to ratify said contract.

4:51

I guess Bill Maher was right though that there was movement

4:53

going on behind the scenes, so maybe he knew something

4:56

that was going on. Doesn't necessarily excuse him

4:58

since he was at WAJ member who was planning

5:00

on still crossing said picket line. But

5:03

I do think it is a very positive development. And as you

5:05

were getting to around the AI, one

5:07

of the tricks that the studio can be like, well, we don't know what

5:09

the technology is going to be, so how do we know that we can

5:12

put it in there. The point though, and actually it's very smart

5:14

of them to demand it right now, was to make

5:16

sure that you get some principles and protection

5:18

before before the technology comes.

5:21

Because one of the problems we've always seen from

5:24

unions and really workers across the spectrum

5:26

is that as technology creeps, you

5:28

know, software goes exponential,

5:30

it doesn't move linearly, and so they're

5:32

trying to like move backwards and trying

5:34

to protect impost protections

5:37

after things have already eaten into them. It's

5:39

a smart move to see something on the horizon.

5:41

It's almost like you can imagine, you know, writers

5:44

or for newspapers or something demanding

5:46

protections. In ninety four and the verge

5:48

of the Internet, some smart people saw that.

5:50

But by the time people were trying to make demands

5:52

or renegotiate contracts or renegotiate

5:55

or protect business. But at that point the Internet had completely

5:57

destroyed it. So I think that we've learned a lot

5:59

from the the early days of the Internet, and they made

6:01

the right call by demanding I mean, it was one hundred

6:03

and fifty days. It is a long time ago without paying it

6:05

was a long time people losing housing and

6:07

stuff. It's very tough.

6:08

Yeah, absolutely so a very helpful

6:11

sign that they were able to apparently looks

6:13

like, achieve a lot of what they were looking

6:15

for here. And you know, when I think about

6:17

the writer's strike, the actors strike,

6:19

and the auto workers, these seem like

6:22

very desperate, especially the auto workers in Hollywood

6:24

seem very desparate. But at the core of all

6:26

these struggles are actually that future of technology

6:28

and how workers are going to fit into the

6:30

future and be able to secure their own livelihood

6:33

as technology advances, and the auto workers

6:35

electric vehicles are very much at the center of what's

6:37

going on there and making sure that they're going to be able to still

6:39

have good, union, well paying

6:41

jobs as we transition to electric

6:44

vehicles. And then obviously with the actors and

6:46

the writers, they were concerned about streaming, which

6:48

is kind of, you know, a technology that has already

6:50

been here that they were behind the eight ball on in

6:52

terms of guaranteeing and securing their own

6:54

livelihoods there and then the future

6:57

with you know, llms and AI

6:59

being to increasingly substitute

7:02

for writers that's what the studios

7:04

wanted, and being able to use likenesses

7:06

to.

7:07

Substitute for actors.

7:08

So they're trying to get ahead of things there, and we'll see what

7:10

the actors are able to negotiate, but you

7:12

know, we'll await details, we'll await

7:15

reaction from the members themselves who have to take

7:17

a look at this and see if it is sufficient. But it

7:19

all seems really encouraging, and

7:21

another example where labor

7:23

has been able to secure

7:26

some real gains for themselves through

7:29

the union process, through the strike

7:31

er potential strike process. Same thing we saw with UPS

7:33

and the Teamsters, which is really

7:36

different from what we've seen most of our lives.

7:38

All these contract negotiations have been workers

7:41

taking concessions. The fact

7:43

that you have even a handful of instances

7:45

of things going in the other direction is

7:47

a really stunning and very hopeful development.

7:49

Absolutely, all right, So now we'll actually get

7:51

to the ball, yes, all right, So what happened

7:54

these pulls, the shaking Washington to

7:56

its very foundation, especially

7:58

over at the White House. Let's go and put up

8:00

there on the screen the reason why everybody

8:02

is paying attention. A twenty twenty four

8:05

national general election poll of

8:07

registered voters Trump fifty

8:09

two percent, Biden forty

8:12

two percent, a ten point margin

8:14

for former President Trump in this

8:16

head head to head race. Now,

8:19

there's a lot of questions actually about this poll and

8:21

the freak out of which we will get to. Let's

8:23

actually put the Washington Post's a

8:25

tear sheet up there on the screen. Who reported

8:27

this. The very way that they reported this,

8:29

Crystal is one of the most bizarre things

8:32

I have ever seen. The headline out of this

8:34

is very obviously Trump is beating Biden

8:36

by ten points. Instead, what they write

8:39

is post ABC poll, Biden faces

8:41

criticism on economy, immigration, and

8:43

height. Now, don't get me wrong, that's definitely a story.

8:45

They talk about his disapproval rating, of which we're going to

8:47

get to a little bit about the favorability

8:49

of some of the candidates. But you have to go almost

8:52

eighteen paragraphs down in this thing

8:54

before they actually mentioned the ten

8:56

point margin that Trump is beating Biden

8:59

by in their very own poll. Now, let's

9:01

of course, let's emphasize all

9:03

of the obvious. It's an outlier.

9:05

You know, do I really think Trump, if it comes

9:07

down to it, if he wins, Do I really think he's gonna win

9:10

by ten points?

9:10

No?

9:11

Is it?

9:12

Certainly? You know, an eight hundred and ninety

9:14

registered voters, relatively smaller sample

9:17

size. You know, are we going to treat this as gospel? Are we

9:19

going to say this is an exact snapshot of

9:21

the race.

9:21

No.

9:21

What we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the overall

9:24

average, and we're going to look at some of the more important

9:26

factors, like how is approval of president,

9:28

how approval of the job, what is? Things

9:31

aren't issue by issue, which historically

9:33

have always been important. But we

9:35

still have to lead with the news here.

9:37

I mean, so, what did you think of their decision to

9:40

basically basically bury

9:42

the biggest lead out of their story.

9:44

I think they were a little bit embarrassed by it, and of

9:47

course they still got the pushback from

9:49

the Washington establishment regardless of their

9:51

framing on the story.

9:52

I mean, in a sense, I think they should be embarrassed

9:54

because I wouldn't believe a poll that said

9:56

either one of these candidates was winning by double

9:58

jugeons, Like the country is just too

10:01

closely to use. It's not going

10:03

to be a ten point election, not going to

10:05

happen. So I think I

10:07

kind of understand their embarrassment with this.

10:10

Nate come to me made the most

10:12

salient point, which is like, listen,

10:15

I you know, kudos to them for even

10:17

publishing this thing, because they knew they were going

10:19

to get a pile on and all the language about like

10:21

it's an outlier, just so you know, it's an outlier.

10:23

And they dig into the sub groups here

10:25

and show some results that just seem again kind

10:27

of farcical on their face, like voters under thirty

10:29

five, I think we're going for Trump by like twenty points. That's

10:32

not reality. I mean, there's no other data

10:34

that backs that up. So he's like,

10:37

on the one hand, kudos to them for publishing

10:39

this, but on the other hand, this is the second poll that they've

10:41

had in a row that's an outlier in this

10:43

way. So there's clearly something going on

10:46

with your methodology that if you aren't standing

10:48

behind it, you need to fix it or you need

10:50

to dig into what's going on here that's creating

10:52

these.

10:53

Results that are really different.

10:54

And if you believe the methodology

10:56

and you think that this is the accurate numbers

10:59

and more accurately reflective than every

11:01

other poll which shows a very different race,

11:04

you know where it's basically, you know, a coin toss

11:06

between the two of them. If you believe that,

11:08

then stand behind it. If you don't, then change your

11:10

methodology and explain what's going on.

11:11

Absolutely well said, that's the thing is, like they're not changing

11:14

their methodology. Clearly they're like a

11:16

little bit torn about it. But I think they should have just

11:18

led with that. The thing is, though, and there's another one.

11:20

NBC News did a deeper poll that

11:23

actually gets to some of the things that the Post

11:25

was trying to package. Let's put

11:27

this up there on the screen. You can actually see

11:29

some of these graphics. These were the most interesting.

11:31

If the election for president were held today,

11:34

for whom would you vote? Biden forty six,

11:36

Trump forty six. That sounds very much

11:38

like what it actually looks like. They pulled some of the other

11:40

candidates, Ron DeSantis. They had Biden forty six to Santus

11:43

forty five. This one, I'm still trying to

11:45

wrap my head around. Biden forty one Nicki

11:47

Haley forty six. I think my only hope is

11:49

that America doesn't know enough about Nicki Haley, but

11:52

they actually this was even more interesting. I'm curious

11:54

what you think of this. Look at how they included

11:57

third parties. So there they had Biden

11:59

thirty six, Trump thirty nine,

12:01

Libertarian candidate five, No Labels

12:04

candidate five, Green Party candidate

12:06

four. So you can see that actually both candidates

12:08

lose a pretty significant margin to the libertarian

12:11

and No Labels candidate as well, with the Green

12:13

Party largely likely drawing from Democrats.

12:15

So you could see there though that's very reminiscent

12:17

of the nineteen ninety two election,

12:20

where neither candidate actually won't even close

12:22

to the popular vote. Clinton was only elected

12:24

forty two percent of the vote because Ross

12:26

pro was there, but he of course won an outright

12:28

majority in the electoral college. At

12:30

George HW. Bush long believed that Ross

12:32

Parrot had cost him the election. But

12:35

it's interesting though, because of course, I mean the No Labels

12:37

candidate, we don't know even if that's going to exist. It's

12:39

not a necessarily on the ballot, but libertarian

12:41

people, libertarian, Green Party are one hundred percent on

12:43

the ballot, and you could see that they're definitely drawing margin from

12:45

Trump and they're definitely drawn margin from

12:47

Biden. So there is not a sizable, but what

12:50

ten percent or so of the overall electorate

12:52

which is definitely drawing from those two

12:54

candidates in a head to head race. And you know,

12:56

that's a pathetic margin if you're going to have a effectively

12:59

a duopoly where they're only able to garner

13:01

individually thirty six thirty nine percent of what

13:03

kind of system were we living in where these people are getting

13:05

elected with one third of the actual popular welt.

13:08

That's nuts, and where the overwhelming majority of Americans

13:10

are like, please, but not another Biden Trump

13:12

rematch. And it's like, here we go, another Biden Trump

13:14

rematch. I mean, look, it's more data that shows

13:17

that the third party candidates tend to take more from Biden

13:19

than they do for Trump. Yeah, right, with

13:21

label, it's about right, it's about three

13:24

percentage points. You know, I don't know

13:26

the breakdown of I would expect libertarian

13:29

maybe takes more. I really don't know, but it's

13:31

more data that shows the third party candidates tend to

13:33

hurt the Democrats more.

13:34

However, let me say is.

13:37

The ten point marchin for Trump in

13:39

the Washington Post ABC poll accurate.

13:41

No doesn't mean that they don't have an issue

13:43

here, No, it does not. I mean they

13:46

have bigger problems right now than

13:48

even worrying about these third party candids. They

13:50

need to fix their own health to begin

13:52

with here, because listen, if

13:55

Trump is who they say is, and listen,

13:57

I thought the Trump administration was

13:59

horrible on a number of levels. The

14:01

tax cuts for the rich, the chaos during

14:04

COVID January sixth, and trying to

14:06

steal the election. All of these things were hard on as

14:08

he's facing ninety one charges, ninety one criminal

14:10

indictments, and you're tied, Like that's

14:12

your best case scenario is you're tied with this

14:15

dude. You need to do some real soul searching

14:17

about your guy and about what has gone wrong in

14:19

this administration that this thing could even be

14:21

close. And let's recall,

14:24

let's assume the state of play is that they're even

14:26

in terms of the polls. That is a way

14:28

better position than Trump has ever been in in twenty

14:30

sixteen or twenty twenty. Now, he ends up losing

14:33

in twenty twenty, but it was close,

14:35

so yes, they should be deeply

14:38

concerned, and it is insanely pathetic

14:41

that this should be the state of the race right

14:43

now, given the fact they had for

14:45

a while they had total democratic control

14:48

of this town. You know, they were able

14:50

to do what they wanted. And I

14:52

really think it comes down to three

14:54

things. Number one is Joe Biden's age,

14:57

you know, just in terms of that instant

14:59

reaction at the sky or like, I just don't

15:01

even know if he's going to make it the next term.

15:03

It's a real problem, Okay.

15:04

I think an even bigger problem is

15:07

the combination of inflation and

15:09

the fact that you have had all of these pandemic

15:12

error programs that have gone away that have left

15:14

people way more cash strapped than

15:16

they were at the beginning of the administration.

15:18

So you can imagine how people

15:20

are looking back and going geez. If

15:23

I think about how I was personally doing during

15:25

the Trump administration versus during the Biden administration,

15:27

I don't know. I you know, there may be a

15:29

lot of things I don't like about Donald Trump, but because

15:32

those programs have all been taken away

15:34

under a democratic administration, as much as

15:36

they may be doing things long term down the road, that

15:38

I like, and I think will be positive for the American working

15:40

class. The reality is today

15:43

people have less money in their bank accounts

15:45

and are having a harder time feeding their families,

15:47

and that is what is showing up in these pools.

15:49

Yes, and actually, you know to the point about the outlier

15:51

and all that, and why part of the reason I don't think it even

15:53

matters. Put this up there. This is an average

15:55

that Harry Entton put out in terms of

15:57

all national polls just from the last month. Quinnipiac

15:59

had by up by one. The Journal had a

16:01

tie, NBC News has a tie, CNN

16:03

has Trump plus one, CBS

16:06

has Trump plus one, Fox News Trump plus

16:08

two, ABC, Washington Post Trump plus nine.

16:10

The median of those is Trump one and

16:12

the average is Trump two. But here's

16:14

the thing. Trump won the election

16:17

in twenty sixteen, and he didn't even win

16:19

the popular vote. I think believe he will ask the popular vote

16:21

by a couple of points. So if he's leading by

16:23

one on average, let's say the margin

16:25

of error on that is two, he could easily

16:27

lose two. He could lose the popular vote by

16:30

an easy margin of one percent. Given California

16:32

and New York. He did absolutely clean up

16:34

in the electoral college. The thing is, and I actually

16:36

saw some experienced posters say this, what you really

16:38

want for Biden is you can disregard

16:41

any of the outlier pols for Trump. Where are

16:43

the outlier pols for Biden. We haven't seen a

16:45

single one from a national polling company

16:48

that has come out, from any major outlet

16:50

that has shown you know, remember those Hillary

16:52

era polls Trump Hillary

16:54

plus sixteen, Hillary plus

16:56

nineteen even I'll never forget, what was it

16:59

Wisconsin had Biden winning by nineteen points

17:01

that ABC Washington Post pole, I believe,

17:03

I mean, he barely went it by one or two in

17:06

twenty twenty. So my point is is that you

17:08

need to see some major outliers to

17:10

assume some sort of strength. Let's give the

17:12

counter to this. Polls are totally wrong in

17:14

twenty twenty two. We also, you know,

17:16

know that the special elections of which we just

17:19

covered in our last show, they're all trending

17:21

heavily democratic. We're seeing a major Democratic turnout.

17:23

Abortion is very much, you know, some sort of sleeping

17:26

giant for a lot of Democratic voters.

17:28

It's very likely that a lot of people who never voted in

17:30

the past are definitely going to come out to vote this time around,

17:32

juicing voter participation. A lot

17:34

of people were willing to overlook their

17:36

economic conditions because they hate stop to steal

17:38

and they hate pro live candidates. So there's

17:40

a lot of case. There's also a good case I think,

17:43

to just you know, keep calm and carry on if

17:45

I am the Biden team as pathetic as it is, but

17:47

age is just one they're not getting around as

17:49

we tease, though Washington is very much

17:51

not happy. Go and put these up there on the

17:53

screen. Larry Sabateau over at

17:56

the crystal Ball no relation,

17:58

he says, ignoring the Washington votes. It's a ridiculous

18:00

outlier. My question, how could you even publish a poll so

18:02

absurd on its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment

18:05

for you. Again, from what you can see, it's really really hard

18:07

to release these outline polls. So you've got

18:09

to give credit to the ABC posts. But I do give

18:11

a major quibble here. If you release constructive

18:13

of outlining poll results are seven R

18:16

ten, you don't get to dismiss your own results.

18:18

I definitely agree with that, and I think that the point

18:20

is that the point is that

18:23

for the freak out. It just shows the underlying

18:25

insecurity of you have an

18:27

eighty one year old man who's running for reelection

18:30

and you can't see a single one

18:32

to even boost the ego a little bit that has

18:34

you winning by plus ten or plus eleven, which

18:36

in their minds, they deserve to win

18:38

the election by that much, and they should be, in

18:40

my opinion, they should be running scared for where they

18:42

are right now.

18:43

I think they are.

18:44

Yeah.

18:44

It also is not lost on me that this poll

18:46

comes at a moment when there was already

18:49

a sort of collective freak out

18:51

among elite media about Biden being the

18:53

nominee again and about Kamal Harris being the

18:55

vice presidential nominee again. Do I

18:57

think, Look, there's a lot of speculation like, oh, maybe

19:00

still going to drop out, Maybe they're still going to have like

19:02

a real primary process. I don't expect

19:04

that, even though I think it would be the right thing to do.

19:07

I think it would improve their chances if

19:09

you were able to have a competitive democratic

19:11

primary process where people could actually evaluate

19:14

their options and maybe get behind a candidate they actually

19:16

feel excited about and actually feel confident is going

19:18

to make it through the next four years. I'm not

19:20

hopeful that that's going to happen, but I'm sure

19:22

all of that pressure around are

19:25

we really once again going with Joe Biden

19:27

as the nominee is only going to increase

19:29

which is part of why they're such a freak out around

19:32

this pole right now as well.

19:33

Yeah, so all right, that's your takeaway.

19:37

All right.

19:38

So at the same time, we've got some big news with

19:40

regard to the United Auto Workers

19:42

ongoing strike against the Big three

19:45

automakers. So put this up

19:47

on the screen. Joe Biden making a big announcement last

19:49

week, under pressure both from within his own

19:51

party but also from the

19:54

Republicans and the fact that Trump is

19:56

going to Michigan. He announced

19:58

that this Tuesday tomorrow, I

20:01

will go to Michigan to join the picket

20:03

line and stand in solidarity with the men and

20:05

women of UAW as they fight for

20:07

a fair share of the value they helped create.

20:10

It's time for a win win agreement

20:12

that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving

20:14

with well paid UAW jobs. Put the

20:17

next piece up on the screen. So, as far

20:19

as we know, this is

20:21

actually the first time that a

20:23

sitting president has ever

20:26

gone to stand in solidarity with

20:28

workers at a picket line. I was

20:30

talking to Jeff Stein at the Washington Post. He has been

20:32

talking to labor historians to find out if there's

20:34

any precedent for it. No one

20:36

quite knows one hundred percent for sure. Yeah,

20:39

but you know, that seems to be an indication that

20:41

this has probably never happened before. What they keep

20:43

saying is at least in one hundred years, this hasn't

20:46

happened. Maybe something happened earlier in the history

20:48

of the Republic, but you would think it would have

20:50

been a big enough deal even at that time

20:53

for there to be some sort of news

20:55

and recording of the event. So, as far as we know,

20:58

this is the first time a sitting president

21:00

has walked a picket line, per Mother Jones.

21:02

They say it's not unusual for politicians

21:04

to walk a picket line. Candidates often make a point

21:06

of dropping by with donuts and coffee. In twenty

21:08

twenty, but Biden did march outside the Palms

21:10

in Las Vegas with casino workers. But

21:13

no sitting president has ever walked a picket line with striking

21:15

workers. They have historically been much more prone

21:17

to extravagant shows of solidarity with the

21:19

companies that are trying to break those strikes,

21:22

and they were called that in eighteen ninety four, where

21:24

over Cleveland sent two thousand federal troops

21:26

to Chicago to break a railroad strike.

21:29

Biden has yet to announce exactly where in

21:31

Michigan he will be, but they say it's a

21:33

safe bet that wherever he ends up going, the National Guard

21:35

thankfully will not be coming with him. So

21:38

this is a huge deal, it really

21:40

is. There's no way to sort of oversell

21:42

this. Democrats had increasingly been

21:44

pushing him to go. You'd already had a number of Democratic

21:47

politicians, including John Fetterman and Rocanna

21:49

and other local Michigan representatives

21:52

who had shown up on the picket line, especially

21:54

after Trump announced that he on

21:57

debate night is going to give a speech

21:59

to union workers past and

22:01

present. I think they felt

22:03

increasing pressure that Biden needed

22:06

to do a little more and be a little

22:08

visible to stake his claim that he

22:10

is the person who was really truly standing alongside

22:12

these workers. And so looks like this

22:15

is gonna happen, which is pretty extraordinary.

22:17

Yeah, you know, so, I also looked into

22:19

it in terms of the history. Everyone keeps saying

22:21

one hundred years. But I've been trying

22:23

to look past and think about the

22:25

major labor era. I also cannot really

22:27

think even the best friends of labor who

22:30

are in the White House, people like FDR.

22:32

Well, FDR for obvious reason, is not gonna be joining a picket

22:34

line. But you know, in terms of issuing

22:38

statements of support and all that. The other

22:40

reason why politically I think this is a very smart

22:42

move is that there are sixty six

22:44

thousand UAW workers crystal in

22:47

the state of Michigan. Just in Michigan.

22:49

Yeah, so that's sixty six thousand

22:52

people who are organized

22:54

and they like to vote. A lot of these union folks.

22:56

So we should not forget. Why

22:58

did Mitt Romney blow Michigan

23:01

so badly back in twenty twelve because

23:03

of the two thousand and either eight or nine op

23:05

ed that he wrote which has said let Detroit go bankrupt,

23:08

that was plastered all over the state

23:10

and he lost it by a massive margin.

23:13

And then all of a sudden Trump comes around and

23:15

wins the state by a fraction of a point

23:17

in twenty sixteen. That is one of the craziest

23:19

things that has ever happened. Well, why did Trump

23:21

win it? Because a, a lot of people

23:23

stayed home, a lot of urban voters who did

23:25

not feel excited by Hillary, and he split

23:27

the union vote by a pretty historic margin for a

23:30

Republican presidential candidate. And it was largely

23:33

on talk of Lordstown. It was talk of

23:35

GM, it was talk of NAFTA,

23:37

and it was specifically speaking to a lot

23:39

of these people concerned. So one of the reasons

23:41

why I think that this is actually a net benefit

23:44

is we finally have two candidates who are recording

23:46

union workers in the state of Michigan,

23:48

which is a complete inversion from

23:50

the Obama era. Like I'm kind

23:52

of with you, you know, but I'm still embracing

23:55

NAFTA, free trade and all this other which

23:57

is screwing you. As opposed to Romney, He's like,

23:59

no, no, I literally want to see you die and collapse.

24:02

So to see that inversion is

24:05

and of course, look it's all in rhetoric, but your rhetoric

24:07

at least precedes something. Usually to

24:10

see that happen, I think is a very benefit

24:12

to the country.

24:13

Trump, in terms of his record as president,

24:15

as you guys know, was a horrific union buster,

24:17

There's no doubt about it. However, I do think the fact

24:19

that he rhetorically approaches these issues

24:22

in a different at least giving sort of like token

24:24

or symbolic gestures towards

24:26

the plight of the workers, I think has changed

24:28

public sentiment because you know,

24:31

back under the Obama era, there was a really hard

24:33

to divide about how Republicans versus Democrats

24:35

felt about unions, and there's still a split.

24:37

I mean, Democrats are still way more favorable towards

24:40

unions, towards labor, towards these strikes in particular,

24:42

than Republicans are. But you no consistently

24:44

have polls that show Republican the Republican

24:47

base, not the elites who still continue to be

24:49

union busters overwhelmingly, but the Republican

24:51

base showing support for unions and standing

24:54

on the side of striking workers. I

24:56

think that the rhetorical shift,

24:59

even though again in terms of the record it's total

25:01

bullshit, but in the rhetorical shift,

25:03

I think has opened up a space among

25:06

the Republican base, combined with the fact,

25:08

I mean, the pandemic changed everything. You

25:10

know, the pandemic really changed the way people are thinking

25:13

about this. We all lived under the specter of

25:15

seeing these corporations making literally

25:17

record breaking profits and then using

25:19

excuse of inflation just further price

25:21

gouge everyone. And so you

25:24

know, that kind of changed the way people feel

25:26

about these labor disputes. So not only

25:28

is it smart because Biden is kind of

25:30

one upping Trump yere in terms of what he's actually

25:32

doing. Trump isn't speaking directly the auto workers.

25:35

There isn't any expectation he's going to walk the picket

25:37

line. All is rhetoric has been on the one

25:39

hand, like I sort of in theory support the workers

25:41

and screw electric vehicles. On the other hand,

25:44

like this kind of anti union union

25:46

bossed traditional Republican language.

25:49

So it's not only smart from that perspective, but also

25:51

you know, it's not just the union workers

25:54

who stand on side of the union

25:56

workers. You have something like seventy

25:58

five percent of the public is on the

26:00

side of the workers over the bosses

26:03

in this dispute. So it

26:05

is not that's why this is so politically

26:07

safe for him, and why it's such an extraordinary

26:10

moment that created the conditions where

26:12

even someone who's been this lifelong,

26:15

like you know, centrist, demoderate kind

26:17

of a guy, can do something that again

26:19

is in terms of history truly extraordinary

26:22

and has, as far as we know, literally never happened

26:24

before.

26:24

One reason I know that the political dynamics

26:26

have changed is back in the twenty

26:29

tens era, there was an entire

26:31

GOP like media ecosystem

26:33

dedicated to like attack remember the whole Scott Walker

26:35

thing, Bini Scott Walker. Yeah,

26:37

attack the teachers, teacher pay, all

26:39

that other stuff. I don't see any of that right now.

26:42

Like in terms of Twitter and YouTube

26:44

and GOP like work, like base

26:46

media, they're not consuming anti union content.

26:48

It doesn't even exist, it doesn't register a

26:51

I think that's two things. One is obviously the base

26:53

moved long past or they agree.

26:55

You know, in many cases, a lot of these people culturally are

26:57

very much with the Republican Party's look

27:00

at it gets a little you know, queasy if

27:02

you're trying to attack their overall economic demands.

27:04

But as you said, Trump has just moved on from

27:06

that. He's pushed a lot of the people the most

27:09

MAGA type influencer. I have not

27:11

seen one single individual

27:13

a Charlie Kirk, Jack Pisobie, any

27:15

of these folks attack the UAW strike. If

27:18

anything, they've posted stuff at Shapiro has se

27:20

he's different. Shapiro

27:23

is not a Trump guy. He is a og member

27:25

of the Tea Party. The libertarian fact. I mean, remember

27:28

he was attacking Trump for being too liberal back

27:30

in twenty sixteen. So I would not put

27:32

it in that way.

27:33

I'm just saying there is still some union

27:35

busting conservative media out there, so it's not like

27:37

it's all gone. But the moment is very different

27:39

from I mean Scott Walker in that moment that.

27:41

Was totally the conservative cause.

27:43

To let Chris Christy came to

27:45

Republican conservative prominence from like

27:47

yelling at teacher unions and being super anti

27:49

union in the state of New Jersey, and so it

27:52

was a very very different moment energy

27:54

wise within the Republican Party, even as

27:57

you know, the policy in terms of what they

27:59

actually do when they're and government hasn't changed,

28:01

but the rhetoric, the attitude, what's

28:03

like the beating heart of the Republican movement

28:06

has in terms of where the online

28:08

energy is has definitely radically

28:11

shifted. And you know, that does

28:13

create a real opening for working

28:15

people, which is part of what we're seeing in part

28:17

of again, what I think is like one of the most hopeful stories

28:19

in the entire country at this point. At

28:22

the same time, we have the UAW

28:25

announcing that they are expanding

28:27

the strike, and some of the details here

28:29

are really quite interesting. Put this

28:31

up on the screen. This is from Jacobin's reporting.

28:34

So as of Friday, they announced

28:36

five thousand war members of the United

28:39

Auto Workers at thirty eight parts

28:41

distribution centers for Stalantis

28:43

and GM walked off the job.

28:45

Those facilities spread across twenty states.

28:48

So you'll note they did not increase

28:50

the strike on Ford, and the

28:52

reason being apparently they've made a lot

28:55

more progress in their negotiations

28:57

with Ford, where the union enjoys

28:59

a better RelA relationship and there's been more

29:01

of a give and take, and apparently Ford has already

29:03

met a number, although not all, of their demands.

29:06

So they did not escalate at Ford. They

29:08

are only escalating at Stalantis and

29:10

GM. So they say those five thousand

29:13

workers joined the thirteen thousand that

29:15

were already out at assembly plants in Ohio,

29:17

Michigan, and Missouri. One of

29:19

the things that I thought was really interesting here

29:22

and shows the

29:24

savviness, I guess, of this stand

29:26

up strike strategy that they're using, where

29:28

instead of everybody going out at once,

29:30

they're picking and choosing and sort

29:32

of, you know, keeping the companies off balance

29:34

and showing that they can extract

29:37

more pain from the companies if they want

29:39

to and if they're not getting what they need at the negotiating

29:41

table. So they added these parts

29:43

distribution centers to the

29:45

mix. That is apparently a very profitable

29:48

part of the company's business. They

29:50

sell after sales spare parts and

29:52

accessories to dealerships. Sean

29:55

Fayn talked to Labor Notes and he said,

29:57

why strike those parts distribution centers.

29:59

Well, they's several reasons. One of our issues is ending

30:02

tiers. The parts distribution

30:04

centers are a big example of that. Their

30:06

wages were capped at twenty five dollars

30:08

some years back, during the greatest times in the history of these

30:11

companies, and that's got to change. So

30:13

that's part of why they're going in this direction

30:15

to make a point about the unfairness for the workers

30:18

at those particular facilities. Let's

30:20

put the map up on the screen so you can see how widespread

30:22

this strike is. So they started with just a handful

30:25

of large scale facilities

30:28

and now auto assembly

30:30

plans where they actually finished the products. Now you

30:32

have these parts distribution centers, which you can see are

30:34

literally all over the country coast to coast, So

30:37

you know, from you've

30:39

got Connecticut, you've got DC

30:42

area, you've got Charlotte, You've got

30:44

Florida, You've got California, You've

30:46

got Oregon, You've got of course

30:49

a lot in that industrial Midwest,

30:51

Indiana, Michigan.

30:52

Ohio, et cetera. So that's where

30:54

they are now.

30:55

We haven't got any updates about if there have been additional

30:57

progress in the talks since they expanded

31:00

strike, but interesting to see

31:02

the strategy that they're deploying here.

31:03

It's very interesting. Yeah, I mean, I especially enjoy

31:06

that factoid around what was going

31:08

on with Ford and about how they're

31:11

able to flex up and now. It's actually

31:13

one of the benefits, I believe, of the new strategy

31:15

which you've educated me on versus a stand

31:18

up strike as opposed to this more targeted strike,

31:20

that you can expand and

31:22

contract and target the particular

31:24

people that are coming to you with different

31:26

demands contracts in order to benefit. So

31:29

I'm curious, I mean, what do you think in terms of

31:31

the movement, the fact if Ford is being

31:33

much more forthcoming in some of the demands,

31:35

you know, maybe this one won't have to drag one hundred

31:38

and fifty day, especially if they're going to ramp up the pain like

31:40

part distribution. We already saw

31:42

how the Chips crisis in twenty twenty

31:44

one devastated the American car

31:46

market and especially the Big Three. Their

31:48

inability to import and to have the

31:51

inputs into their cars just destroyed,

31:53

you know, overall the price and a lot of the profits

31:55

in the bottom line that the company was already having.

31:57

So if they're able to do this, I mean, you could cripple critical

31:59

infrastructure so quickly. Yeah, for these for

32:01

these cars.

32:02

Listen, I have no idea, but if

32:04

I had to guess, there's a lot of pressure

32:06

on these automakers.

32:07

Right now.

32:08

You have the fricking president, former and

32:11

current presidents of the United States

32:13

coming to Michigan, and you know,

32:15

Biden overtly being on the side of the workers.

32:17

Trump mixed bag. But that's a lot of pressure

32:19

being put directly on you if you are

32:22

a Big Three executive. Now you have

32:24

the news that Ford is offering

32:26

some significant concessions and getting at

32:28

least part of the way there in terms of the

32:30

worker demands. That applies additional

32:32

pressure onto Stilantis and onto

32:35

GM and then when you have this,

32:37

you know, this strategy that sort of creates chaos

32:40

and shows that they they can last

32:42

a long time with their strike fund is pretty full.

32:44

Since they're not going on all at once, they can

32:46

really stretch that strike fund. And in a lot of ways,

32:48

strikes are a game of chicken, right who's going to blink

32:51

first, Who's going to say this pain is

32:53

too great for me? And really,

32:55

you know, have to give way and come to the table

32:57

and give up some concessions. Right now,

32:59

I think the autoworkers have positioned themselves very

33:01

well. Now, I should say there has been some

33:03

dissent within the union of some of the

33:05

workers really wanted everyone to go out at once

33:08

and have a big show of force and really stand in

33:10

solidarity together. And you know, I think Sean

33:12

Fain was sympathetic to that view, but ultimately

33:14

decided this was the safier tactic. There

33:16

are risks to the stand up

33:18

strike strategy that is more targeted versus

33:21

everybody going out all at once. The risks

33:23

are that you don't have everybody participating

33:25

in the same way. There can be a breakdown

33:28

in solidarity. It requires a lot

33:30

of discipline for every worker at every

33:32

facility to know exactly what their part

33:34

is and what the rules and guidelines are and what they're supposed

33:36

to be doing when so, there is like a risk

33:39

on the other.

33:39

Side of that.

33:40

But so far, I feel

33:42

like the auto workers have a lot more leverage

33:44

and power in this situation than the big

33:47

three do. So one of the points of leverage that automakers

33:50

and also like CNBC and the Business press

33:52

or whatever are trying to use as this idea

33:54

that all the strike is going to cause car prices

33:56

to go up. Sean Faine not that

33:58

one down pretty easily when he was asked

34:00

about it.

34:01

Let's take a listen.

34:01

Companies chose to put us in this position because

34:04

they had eight weeks

34:06

to get a contract, and they chose for seven

34:08

weeks to screw around and do nothing. They

34:10

got serious in the last week. This isn't on

34:12

the UAW workers. When bad

34:15

things happen, and things are happening right now, it's all

34:17

because the companies. They own it. It's on their shoulders.

34:19

So you deny that it's going to hurt the consumers in the

34:21

long run.

34:22

What's hurt the consumers in the long run is the fact

34:24

that companies have raised prices on vehicles thirty

34:26

five percent in the last four years,

34:29

just our wages went up six percent. The

34:31

CEO pay went up forty percent. Profits

34:33

have been into billions, the hundreds of billions they

34:36

own.

34:36

All of this, that's what's concent I

34:39

mean, it's pretty hard to argue with those numbers. Like, listen,

34:41

our wages are not the problem, because guess what,

34:44

we've been getting screwed on wages ever since

34:46

basically the two thousand and eight recession, even before

34:48

that. Actually put this up on the screen from Heather Long.

34:51

She highlights that US auto

34:53

workers have seen their paychecks plunge further

34:55

from ninety three to twenty twenty three than any

34:58

other of the one hundred and sixty SI industries

35:00

we regularly track. In the early nineties,

35:02

autoworkers with the top paid rank and file

35:05

workers. Now they are middle of the

35:07

pack. And I think the title for that chart

35:09

there where they say now autoworkers just

35:11

another job, kind of says it all. The

35:13

autoworker used to be the sort of gold

35:16

standard, rock solid, middle

35:18

class job. It was this iconic

35:20

industry where the understanding was if you worked

35:23

there and you did the job, you were going to be able

35:25

to have the basics of a stable middle class

35:27

life that has been eaten away, and

35:29

so autoworker wages have suffered

35:31

more than those of workers in any

35:34

other industry.

35:35

So for them to turn around and be like, oh, it's your fault.

35:37

The car prices are so high when they've

35:39

been taking a haircut, and when their

35:41

labor makes up a grand total of like five

35:43

percent of the cost of a new car,

35:46

it just doesn't hold water.

35:47

It doesn't hold any water, as you said, And I think

35:49

that the most important point is that these

35:51

are not people who've been getting paid well. They've actually

35:53

been underpaid for more than a decade. They

35:55

got massive haircut after two thousand

35:57

and eight, and are just trying to keep pace with inflation,

36:00

with any of the demands and all the flexibilities

36:02

and all the things that the white collar workforce and many blue

36:04

collar workers have been able to demand.

36:06

They find themselves as part of an America's critical

36:09

security or critical economic

36:11

infrastructure and are using you know, I

36:13

mean again, you know, without them the big they

36:16

could have decided not to take the haircut, and they

36:18

would have all gotten completely bussed. Two

36:20

thousand and eight. They did the car makers,

36:22

the Big three, a big favor, and don't forget

36:24

all of us saved the auto industry.

36:26

And I think that was the correct decision back

36:29

then. But you know, one of the things is that they

36:31

have just been able to make fantastic profits,

36:33

and more importantly, the executives, the shareholders

36:35

have all benefited. The workforce itself is the only

36:37

one who has not since the I think

36:40

GM I believe still owes billions of dollars

36:42

to the US government. So let's all not forget

36:45

about what happened, you know, not that long ago.

36:47

Yeah, very true, very true.

36:48

All right, let's move on Ukraine. This is

36:50

the story which I have. I couldn't I couldn't

36:53

believe when I first saw it, and the more that we research

36:55

it, the more insane it actually gets.

36:57

President Zelenski was here in Washington with

37:00

his hand had out asking for twenty

37:02

five billion more from the US Congress. By all

37:04

accounts, they'll probably give it to him, although we might have an

37:06

interim shutdown in the meantime. But

37:08

after that he visited fellow NATO ally

37:10

Canada. And while he was in Canada, justin

37:13

Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament decided

37:15

to honor President Selensky in a session

37:17

very much like we had our joint session,

37:19

where they featured a quote Ukrainian

37:22

freedom fighter. And it turns

37:24

out that that Ukrainian fighter who

37:26

fought in World War Two, as they described it,

37:28

was a literal Nazi. Here's

37:31

how they described it. Though at the time,

37:33

let's take a listen.

37:34

Lelensky's speech received at least a

37:36

dozen standing ovations. There

37:40

was also one for this man, a

37:42

ninety eight year old Ukrainian Canadian

37:44

who fought for Ukrainian independence

37:46

against the Russians during the Second World

37:48

War.

37:49

Fighting for Ukrainian independence against the Russians

37:51

in the Second World War certainly one way to say

37:53

it, the other way to say it. Let's put this up there on

37:55

the screen, our friend yegor Is. It

37:57

was called the SS Division Galicia,

38:00

which changed its name to the

38:02

First Ukrainian Division in April of nineteen

38:04

forty five, after already losing the war,

38:06

the same month that Hitler killed himself. Calling

38:08

a quote ninety eight year old SS veteran

38:11

a Ukrainian veteran is like calling Adolf

38:13

Eichmann an Argentinian farmer.

38:15

This is no joke, Crystal. This was straight

38:18

up This is not like he was a Wehrmached

38:20

soldier. No straight up Waffen

38:23

SS actual Nazi

38:26

soldier in the Second World

38:28

War. A division, by the way, the SS

38:30

Division Galicia implicated in

38:33

several horrific

38:35

instances during the Second World War,

38:37

specifically targeting the Polish people,

38:40

who are very much waking up to this. The

38:42

fact this is not a bigger scandal in

38:44

the United States, and really even in

38:46

Canada, who is only just now waking up to this and

38:48

took a long time to even acknowledge

38:50

or even apologize more than twenty four

38:52

to forty eight hours after this incident, is

38:55

outrageous. Put this up there

38:57

on the screen. This is actually from a university professor

39:00

historian. There he says, quote, these are

39:02

the photos for those who are watching can

39:04

see of the S Scalicia Division veteran

39:06

who was given standing ovation by the Canadian

39:08

Parliament. He published these himself

39:11

of his division in training in

39:13

Germany, standing in the middle of the first photo,

39:16

second on the left. In the second photo. If we want to go

39:18

ahead and show that one and without a helmet near

39:20

the machine gun in that photo, I mean one

39:22

of the things is he volunteered

39:25

in nineteen forty three, okay,

39:27

in the Turnopyl region of western

39:30

Ukraine, which means he fought and served

39:32

in this division at the exact times

39:35

when it was both commissioned and was implicated

39:37

in multiple atrocities, as I said,

39:40

in the region. And unfortunately,

39:42

look, this is going to be you already know, this

39:44

is going buck wild in Russia because they're like,

39:46

of course, you know, they literally honored a

39:48

Nazi. But also raises the uncomfortable

39:51

truth of which many people in the West don't want to

39:53

talk about. Is yeah, there are some Nazi

39:55

affiliated groups in the Ukrainian military

39:58

who have a complicated history. And this

40:00

is something I've even raised here on the show before.

40:03

I'm glad to even show it. Is a lot of people

40:05

think of the SS and of the

40:07

SS and specifically like the military

40:10

units as just being all German, and it's

40:12

actually not true because they had this entire idea

40:14

of like an Aryan like race. Himmler

40:16

himself actually decreed that this has to be

40:18

like the Galician Division because they were quote

40:21

more aryan like than other slobs.

40:23

So that's that's what

40:26

he served.

40:26

That what we're celebrating here to the Canadian Parliament.

40:29

That's who they celebrate.

40:29

Now.

40:30

Look, I guess to be fair, it's become a big

40:32

enough scandal now that the Speaker of

40:34

the Canadian Parliament as Ad issue apology.

40:36

To my knowledge at the time of this taping, Justin

40:38

Trudeau has not acknowledged this. But the

40:41

crazy thing is they had a meeting beforehand.

40:44

The granddaughter of this gentleman,

40:46

if I guess if you can't even call him, that was

40:49

actually posted a photo. And

40:51

it's even more interesting there wasn't. The reason

40:53

they changed their name to the Ukrainian

40:55

Division is there was an entire effort

40:57

after the Second World War to whitewash they're

40:59

not affiliation and to portray themselves

41:02

as Ukrainian freedom fighters. And

41:04

actually over a thousands of them emigrated

41:06

to Canada. So this is a very, very disgusting

41:09

situation where they were explicitly

41:11

used the name to portray themselves

41:14

as these great freedom fighters to gain

41:16

access to the West. I mean, this is a long standing

41:18

thing that a lot of people who fought within the

41:20

ass did. Now look in terms of

41:23

like I don't know if this man

41:25

served in the actual play, but

41:28

you know, look in terms of the whole

41:30

idea of like the good Nazi and all that.

41:32

He volunteered for a Nazi

41:34

division in forty three, served

41:38

until the end of the war. He was around

41:40

or the very loose new people who

41:42

straight up slaughtered civilians and were implicated

41:45

in the death and also the liquidation of Jews

41:47

in the Eastern European

41:49

theater wort. I don't think there's any getting

41:51

around that. And these are not people who we should

41:53

be celebrating. I cannot believe that they

41:55

honored him, that Zelenski, you

41:57

know, like you know, the other thing is here.

42:00

Maybe you can forgive the Canadians for not knowing.

42:02

Okay, a lot of these people are idiots. They don't know he

42:05

knew what was going on. Do you think Eden know He's

42:07

like, oh, he fought for Ukrainian independence in World War

42:09

two? People in Ukraine they know, they

42:11

know which side people fought on.

42:13

Right, Well, I mean, this is one of the

42:15

uncomfortable realities that was

42:18

easy for a lot of people to acknowledge before

42:20

the war and has become something that

42:22

no one really wants to talk about anymore. But

42:25

some of the great like heroes of Ukrainian

42:27

nationalism committed you know, incredible

42:30

atrocities during World War Two fighting

42:33

against the Russians on behalf of the Nazis.

42:36

So one thing when I was talking to

42:38

Yegor about this is I was trying to understand, like

42:40

you, like, was this an accident?

42:42

Did they know?

42:43

Because when you hear freedom fighter against

42:45

the Russians during World War two, it doesn't take

42:47

a rocket scientist to figure out then,

42:49

okay, which side were you actually on? And

42:51

one thing that he really wanted to impress upon me was

42:54

that this is not like a one off incident.

42:56

First of all, we have seen numerous

42:58

times the you know, Ukrainian social

43:01

media accounts posting.

43:02

Photos of their soldiers with all sorts of like.

43:04

Nazi insignia, And I don't want to play into

43:06

the Russian idea that like every Ukrainian

43:08

is a Nazi.

43:09

That's far from truth, Okay, So we're

43:11

trying to.

43:11

Be nuanced here and say, listen, there is an element

43:13

and certainly those who were the hard

43:16

Ukrainian nationalists and continue to be the hard

43:18

right Ukrainian nationalists have

43:20

a lot of very uncomfortable Nazi

43:22

ties and sometimes have Nazi

43:24

insignia tattoos on their uniforms

43:26

and tattooed on themselves. So I don't want

43:29

to play into, like, you know, some blanket

43:31

statements. But the other thing he was telling

43:33

me is it's sort of akin to you

43:35

know, Southerners who want to whitewash

43:38

the Civil War and the Confederacy and the

43:40

Confederate flag and all of that. That there's

43:42

been an ongoing project in

43:44

Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, in the Baltic

43:46

States to try to whitewash their

43:48

quote unquote freedom fighters. And this has

43:51

been going on, you know, under the radar of

43:53

people who are and don't want to be embarrassed by

43:55

their like Nazi Grandpa as eeg Or

43:57

put it to me anymore. And so

44:00

this has been going on under the radar.

44:02

But for them to actually achieve

44:04

this moment of having a legit

44:07

former Nazi celebrate and receive

44:09

a standing ovation from Trudeau

44:12

and Zelensky, I mean, that's a whole

44:14

other level. And in some ways it ends

44:16

up being useful because it shines a light on something

44:19

that's been going on underneath the surface

44:21

here that really, like Nazi

44:23

apologias should not be mainstream,

44:26

it should not be allowed to continue, It should

44:28

be called out for exactly what it

44:30

is, which you can see really clearly.

44:31

Yeah, I'm glad that he raised then that we're actually

44:34

you know, look, it is a complicated history. I'm

44:36

not going to sit here and just say it was all easy,

44:38

you know. And here's the uncomfortable truth. When

44:40

the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union,

44:43

a lot of those people were cheering them on Ukrainians

44:45

polls. A lot of these folks, you know why, because

44:47

the hate of the Soviets, I get it. A lot of the

44:49

Latvians of Lithuanians. And here's the other uncomfortable

44:52

truth. The Latvians of Lithuanians, the Ukrainians

44:54

were involved in some of the worst pugroms

44:57

of the early you know what twentieth century.

44:59

They had no love for Jews, and they did

45:01

not stand in the Nazis way, or at the very least

45:04

they helped him out. Some of the highest liquidation rates

45:06

of Jews in an entire like

45:09

Nazi regime happened in Eastern Europe.

45:11

And it was because in many cases of a willing

45:13

and a compliant and some guy enthusiastic

45:16

populace. I'm not denigrating the people

45:18

were the descendants of them today. I'm just saying though

45:21

that at that time, you know, their own symbols

45:23

of nationalism. When it's going to be so inextricably

45:26

linked to that time period of World

45:28

War Two, we should be very we should

45:30

not be uncomfortable to pointing out some of

45:32

the major moral quandaries around this, and

45:34

to also think about who we in the West

45:37

are siding with and are supporting. And

45:39

I think this is a very basic fact. It is

45:41

of course unjust and horrific that the Russians

45:43

invaded Ukraine, but it is also empirically

45:46

true that US provided in Western provided

45:48

weapons have gone into the hands of straight up

45:50

neo Nazis in Ukraine. It's undeniable.

45:53

I mean absolutely undeniable. You

45:55

can decide, you know, the lesser of two evils, the

45:57

end of the enemy is my friend, et

45:59

cetera. But you know, phrasing and framing

46:01

this all and just like democracy and

46:03

autocracy, you know, I see some people being

46:06

like the front line of democracy is

46:08

in the dun boss, and I'm just like, all right, shut

46:10

up, I'm sorry, Like that's ludicrous. Like, first

46:12

of all, we're talking about one of the most corrupt nations

46:14

in all of Eastern Europe. You should maybe

46:16

go ask some of the people in the dun Boss previous

46:19

to this conflict who they had allegiances to.

46:21

All I'm saying is is messy, is complicated.

46:24

None of this is justification for a

46:26

horrible invasion, just to show you, like,

46:28

the world is not black and white, it's very

46:31

gray. Yeah, this case it gets.

46:33

In this case, it's a little bit black.

46:35

A little bit this one, well, in this one it gets a little

46:37

Nazi gray in terms of what those un

46:39

warns look like. And I think it's I think

46:41

it's a tragedy. More so also that

46:43

people in the West, they don't they don't want to

46:45

admit this stuff. Only in Canada because

46:47

they straight up honored him at the parliament. But how

46:50

many people in the US media are talking about this.

46:52

Not one.

46:52

I haven't seen a single media outlet

46:54

here in Washington condemn

46:57

you know Lensky too. Listen, if you're gonna come

46:59

here and shake your hand asking for money, maybe

47:01

don't be honoring Nazis. Whi're over

47:03

here.

47:03

Somebody on his stack is not doing him any favors.

47:05

Somebody on his stack again, you

47:08

can excuse the idiot Canadians maybe,

47:10

although probably not, but they

47:12

knew. There's no way that those

47:15

people on Zelenski's staff, you know, the advanced

47:17

staff and Zelensky and Stif, There's no

47:19

way they didn't know who this guy was. Right. This

47:22

is coded language in Ukraine for Yeah,

47:25

they fought on the side of the Nazis. You think that was a

47:27

smart move. And then it gets to the uncomfortable

47:29

question of like, hey, maybe they support

47:31

it a little bit or at the very least like tascitly

47:33

okay with it, as they are in their own

47:36

government and in their coalition. So people

47:38

can think that we're unfair and harping on this,

47:40

but like, you know, look, you know we these

47:42

are the people we're supposedly allied with. These are

47:44

the people who are funding with a blank check. You

47:46

got to ask questions about your friends more so,

47:48

probably even than your enemies.

47:50

It's also, in a certain sense, like the logical

47:52

endpoint of this black

47:55

and white Disney version of the

47:57

war that you're gesturing towards

47:59

saga that it's just like the

48:01

Russians are bad and the Ukrainians are

48:03

good. Oh, here's Ukrainian freedom fighter

48:05

quote unquote who was fighting against

48:07

the Russians.

48:08

He must be good.

48:09

I mean, that's like the logical endpoint of

48:11

this really silly, childlike

48:14

version of events that we've been fed by

48:17

the media, and so in that regard,

48:19

it's actually not surprising that you would end

48:21

up with something that is this egregious,

48:24

just like, you know, literally celebrating a Nazi

48:26

to own the Russians kind of makes sense

48:29

as a logical conclusion of the direction

48:31

that we've been heading in with all of this. So absolutely

48:34

shorny, we should say, you know, there are a lot of Canadian

48:37

Jewish groups obviously understandably very

48:40

upset about this state of affairs

48:42

and wondering, like we are, what the hell

48:44

were you thinking?

48:45

And how can you let this happen?

48:47

So Trudeau and Parliament under

48:49

a lot of pressure now to make

48:51

amends for this state of affairs.

48:54

But yeah, in terms of US media, pretty much

48:56

silent.

48:56

Where's the ADL huh Adl, who's

48:59

willing to call anybody an anti semi

49:01

for anything anybody says about Israel or anything anybody

49:03

ever says even about them. They haven't put out a

49:05

single statement about this. Wow, this is

49:08

the probably I mean, let's think about

49:10

it. Since Operation paper Clip,

49:12

this is probably the most prominent

49:15

celebration of a literal Nazi

49:17

in the West in decades throughout

49:20

all of the West. And these people don't have a

49:22

word to say. They're complete and utter

49:24

tools. So let's just keep that very

49:26

clear. Let's move on now and talk a little

49:28

bit about a government shutdown. We put it into

49:30

the Ukraine block because I guess there's some elements

49:33

about Ukraine. We want to make sure everybody stays updated

49:35

about what's going on. There was a fascinating

49:37

fight between Congressman Matt Gaetz is one

49:39

of the leaders of the shutdown movement, with

49:41

Maria Bartrioma over on Fox

49:44

Business. It was a clash of too Kevin

49:46

McCarthy of Kevin McCarthy ideology and the Gates

49:48

ideology. Let's take a listen.

49:50

I'm glad I get to respond to your monologue because

49:52

if you're saying that I'm standing in the way of all the Republican

49:54

wins, I'd love you to enumerate them.

49:57

Watching my friend and mentor Jim Jordan,

49:59

it was quite pay because he started

50:01

by saying we should only pick one fight the

50:03

border, but then as the interview went on, he said,

50:05

well, we should pick a second fight. Jack Smith and

50:07

by the time the interview rounded out, he was saying that we shouldn't

50:10

be funding Ukraine without a plan, and yet

50:12

the very continuing resolution that you and Jim Jordan

50:14

seemed to before continues to have three hundred

50:16

million dollars more for Ukraine. So I

50:19

think we ought to fight on all fronts. I think the border

50:21

is very important. Kevin wants it in one

50:23

big up or down vote. Keep the government

50:25

open, shut it down. I'm saying, single subject

50:27

spending bills. It's the only way to break the fever

50:29

and liberate ourselves from this out of control spending.

50:31

Well, he's doing the four bills next week.

50:34

So because we're making him, because we're making.

50:36

You're doing it, so to push now

50:38

to blow up all of the wins that

50:40

you all have had.

50:41

Now, which wins, please enumerate

50:43

that?

50:43

Well?

50:44

Okay, Well, how about the fact that he has

50:46

set up a Weaponization committee

50:48

to investigate the DOJ whether they're

50:50

involved.

50:50

In a cover up.

50:51

I do not see any of the January sixth gears using

50:53

full straight.

50:54

Now indirectly working with Democrats,

50:56

because you are going to allow Chuck Schumer

50:58

to come up with a continuing resolution next

51:01

week to fund the government that's what your actions

51:03

are doing. That's why some people feel this

51:05

is a personal vendetta you have against

51:08

the speaker.

51:09

No, my vendetta is against a Washington

51:12

system that allows corruption to

51:14

put the interests of lobbyists and

51:16

pacts above the interests of the American people. Kevin

51:18

McCarthy facilitates that system, and

51:21

I do deeply resent that.

51:22

So there it is. That's the fight with

51:25

Maria and Matt Gates. Now,

51:27

to be clear, Ukraine is part of the story

51:29

that will be voted on. But just to explain in

51:31

senatees or Congression leans,

51:33

because I know this is complicated. A continuing

51:35

resolution is a giant bill that

51:38

funds the government. Once upon a time,

51:40

before Obama was president, and when

51:42

the Congress kind of ish worked, they

51:45

used to pass individual

51:47

appropriations bills for

51:49

each part of the government, which were reported

51:51

out of committee and sent to the floor. So

51:53

the Department of Agriculture had one bill, the

51:56

Department the Defense had one bill, the Department

51:58

of the Treasury had one bill. Within these

52:00

bills, there would be a debate, a line item

52:02

debate. As he was saying about it's called the normal

52:05

procedure. It hasn't been the normal procedure now in

52:07

Washington. Basically since two thousand and nine,

52:09

and especially since twenty thirteen, Gates

52:12

and the Freedom Caucus have demanded a return

52:14

to that, although Kevin McCarthy the Senate and

52:16

all these others have decided that they

52:18

want to stick. Hence the showdown that's

52:20

happening right now now. In terms of the demands

52:23

that are being made here, Ukraine is one of those demands,

52:25

but it's not one of the most prominent ones. Let's put this up there on

52:27

the screen. One of the things that the House GOP

52:30

wants to do is they want to cut spending,

52:32

but they have decided to rule out over

52:34

ninety percent of the federal budget, meaning

52:37

entitlements and defense, so

52:39

that leaves discretionary spending, which

52:41

is only about seven percent of the overall federal budget.

52:44

That includes cuts to twenty seven percent of

52:46

what they were advocate for the Social Security

52:48

Administration, nutrition assistance for

52:50

newborns, money to ensure our drinking water

52:52

is safe, most federal education

52:54

money, federal cancer and stroke

52:57

research. So Crystal, I

52:59

personally think, look, I actually do think

53:01

a return to a normal order would be a good thing. Maybe

53:04

you know, conceptually that said, what people

53:06

are demanding here is crazy and actually

53:08

would be. Look, it's always ridiculous.

53:11

Yeah, look, we could cut spending. Let's let's

53:13

take a freaking axe to so much

53:15

to the Pentagon. But they don't want to touch it.

53:17

Never they don't want to. And that's where

53:20

Look, I'll give Gates credit because Gates actually

53:22

would touch Pentagon spending,

53:24

but the rest of them they refuse, and so the

53:26

whole thing just becomes this crazy farce

53:29

effectively about cutting to the bone. You

53:31

know, any existing you know, welfare programs

53:33

which you have, which by the way, many of these are as means

53:35

tested if anybody is you know, worried about that,

53:37

but you know, many of these existing programs are not you

53:40

know, exactly like cash that.

53:41

People are living high on the hogs.

53:43

That type of welfare doesn't even exist in the United States.

53:46

Like, that's what people don't understand. If you're not working, you

53:48

actually can't get welfare. Is even if you're unemployed,

53:50

you have to you can't just have no job, like you

53:52

have to a paid in the unemployment insurance or to get unemployment

53:54

insurance. I just don't think a lot of people understand

53:56

that. So a lot of the cuts that we're talking about

53:58

are silly. That said, on the Ukraine side,

54:01

I'm one hundred percent with them. But the problem

54:03

is is, from a political perspective,

54:05

if McCarthy does fold,

54:07

and it does look like he's going to to individually

54:09

bring these bills to the floor, the vast majority

54:12

of the House of Representatives does support Ukraine eight. So

54:14

it's not like it's not going to pass. But that's

54:16

the issue that I really have with this.

54:18

Well, and even that so the expectation, I

54:20

mean, this is also in the weeds, and I know,

54:22

I'm sorry, I apologize, but it really does

54:24

matter because we are coming down to the wire here and it

54:26

looks we're adding towards the government shutdown

54:29

almost totally because there's just.

54:31

Not even time.

54:31

If they were going to do some other sort of complicated

54:34

discharge petition process, there's just not even time

54:36

to get that done. So here's what the

54:38

state of play is. Kevin McCarthy is

54:40

going to try to pass through the House these individual

54:43

bills like you're talking about to appease the

54:45

Matt Gates of the world. Okay, that's

54:47

going to go nowhere in terms of the Senate. Meanwhile,

54:50

the Senate is trying to pass their

54:52

own continuing resolution, which would be comprehensive,

54:55

which Kevin McCarthy, because

54:57

he values his position as Speaker of the House,

55:00

is not going to put forward in the House. So

55:02

you have this impass between the

55:04

two chambers. What it looks

55:06

like maybe we're going to end up with

55:09

is a situation where they use this kind

55:11

of workaround called a discharge petition

55:13

that doesn't require a speaker to bring something to

55:15

the floor that you can get a majority of members

55:17

which would be some combination of probably mostly Democrats

55:20

and a few Republicans to bring something

55:22

like what the Senate is going to pass to the floor.

55:24

But again that's.

55:25

Going to take some time, and there's no guarantees about that

55:27

either, because the Matt Gates

55:30

faction says even that would be a

55:32

real betrayal if anything passes

55:34

through the House that uses Democrats

55:36

to get across the finish line, So it's a

55:38

complete impass. You know, their demands are

55:41

really extreme, as we show there, and extraordinarily

55:43

ideological. Even if you like we

55:45

are sympathetic to their demands on Ukraine

55:48

on everything else. I mean, it's just

55:50

really trying to take a hatchet to these

55:53

already threadbare social safety net

55:55

programs which have been cut and cut and cut by

55:57

the way during the COVID era, in which they already extracted

56:00

a pound of flesh over the last debt ceiling freaking

56:02

negotiations. They got a lot of what they wanted there

56:04

too, which it's easy to forget

56:06

about. So I think what was notable mostly

56:09

about the Maria Barbaroma Matt Gates

56:11

clip there is just how how

56:16

ugly it was. I mean, it really is bringing

56:18

into the open and I think Maria,

56:20

you could just basically assume those are like coming

56:22

directly from Kevin McCarthy. I mean, that is really

56:24

the divide here, and it's quite it's quite something.

56:27

From a pure entertainment perspective. Here's my ideal

56:29

solution. The Republicans do team

56:31

up with the Democrats to pass it, and then McCarthy loses

56:34

the speakership just because I would enjoy it.

56:36

I mean me personally, I like to say people lose

56:38

their jobs, you know, I like to see a little bit of chaos. That's

56:41

what the House is for.

56:42

But the problem, like people, this

56:44

is the same issue they had at the beginning of the Kevin McCarthy

56:46

speakership fight, like they don't have an alternative, yeah,

56:48

unfortate that can unite the caucus,

56:51

and so they.

56:51

Won't have a speaker. You know, there's actually there's an interesting

56:54

rule. You don't have to remember the House representative to be

56:56

speaker. Yeah, you could be a normal.

56:58

People always Oh, let's make tre don't speak thouse.

57:00

I mean I would enjoy it. I would enjoy it,

57:03

Let's be honest.

57:04

The one thing that I did think that Matt

57:06

gets was right on when he was like

57:08

Mario was like, and we can continue with all

57:10

the wins, and he's like, what wins, because

57:13

he's pointing to the fact, I mean, in fairness,

57:15

like I said, they did win some of their like

57:18

hard ideological goals

57:20

through the debt ceiling fight, so those in

57:22

their view would be wins. I would consider them losses,

57:24

but they would consider them wins. But in

57:27

terms of all their like you know, their Weaponization Committee

57:29

and they're like impeachment investigation or whatever,

57:32

he's pointed to the fact that this is all just like

57:35

bullshit virtue signaling without

57:37

any real teeth at this point. And he's

57:39

not wrong about that.

57:40

No, he's not. Because McCarthy is not given them

57:42

the powers and the subpoenas, stuff that they

57:44

actually want for the Commons. It's

57:46

very interesting. And again, I know there were boring people

57:49

with the weeds, but you know, if you learn a little bit about

57:51

the procedure and you start to speak some of this language,

57:53

you're like, you know, look, you can conceptually

57:56

understand why it would definitely

57:58

be better to move away from these giant

58:01

crs, these continuing resolutions,

58:03

because they're just packed full of junk. Nobody

58:05

ever knows what's going in there, and never debated,

58:07

they're never you know, marked up and effectively.

58:09

The real problem is this undemocratic because

58:12

it means that only three people are making the law, the

58:14

President, the leader of the Senate, and the Leader

58:16

of the House. They write those bills

58:18

and then they released two thousand pages and they go look

58:20

up or down. There's no debate, nothing.

58:23

Oh, you're going to lead to a government shutdown. It's

58:25

basically a blackmail situation invented,

58:27

like I said, by John Bayner and Paul

58:29

Ryan and all those other people, all going back all the

58:31

way back to the Obama administration. So getting

58:33

away from it would be great, but listen, I'm not going

58:35

to hold my breath. That thing is rule in Washington.

58:38

It has now they love it. You know that the establishment

58:40

loves that because they can chock full of you know,

58:42

Ukraine, a disaster relief. Oh you want

58:44

to vote against Waii. Remember the whole

58:46

the two thousand dollars check thing. McConnell

58:48

held it up because he refused to put

58:51

it on the floor as a single item. He would only

58:53

put it up against government spending and went ahead

58:55

and killed it. So there's a lot of reasons why this

58:58

really does hurt you as an individual

59:00

citizen to pass laws this way.

59:01

Yeah, but the problem there's just too much dysfunction

59:03

for them to be able to and has

59:05

been now for over a decade, for them to be able

59:08

to actually like you know, run the government

59:10

and the way.

59:10

That the government is supposed to be run.

59:12

So not that I'm really like longing for

59:14

those days of bipartisan consensus

59:16

around you know, cutting off the social

59:18

say.

59:19

But the way that made those laws genuinely

59:21

was good, especially forty fifty years ago, it was

59:23

good. Great. The way that they used to really take

59:25

it seriously. Think about the committee,

59:27

the way that you would have witnesses come and testify. They

59:30

would truly. I mean, go back into one

59:32

of my personal favorite instances of American

59:34

history is the tax bill by John F. Kennedy,

59:37

the way that was reported and thought about and

59:39

then eventually passed by Lyndon Johnson,

59:41

The amount of work that went into that bill, which ended

59:43

up being one of the best things ever happened to the US

59:46

economy. People should really go back and think

59:48

about the debates around income tax

59:50

and about how corporations and it's set up

59:52

for a lot of prosperity in the sixties. So I

59:54

don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but it really

59:56

was interesting and there is there is, you know,

59:58

a good thing to be for good order,

1:00:01

but it requires a lot of other stuff.

1:00:03

Well, the reason that it's impossible

1:00:05

now is because the parties have completely

1:00:07

ideologically diverged. So,

1:00:10

you know, used to be that there was actually over

1:00:12

ideological overlap between the parties

1:00:14

and that just doesn't really exist anymore.

1:00:17

Now. It's theoretically, I mean, you.

1:00:18

Could imagine a scenario where you ended

1:00:20

up with you know, I mean you start to see

1:00:22

glimmers of Okay, there's a few Republicans who

1:00:24

are serious on antitrust and there's some Democrats

1:00:27

that.

1:00:27

You would start to see, yeah, the railway.

1:00:29

I mean there's a few little glimmers, but there's

1:00:31

not anything like the type of actual

1:00:33

like cross parts and ideological

1:00:35

overlap that used to enable that sort

1:00:37

of working.

1:00:38

And I don't know if we'll ever get back to that.

1:00:42

Speaking of dysfunction in Washington, as

1:00:44

you guys know, Senator of Menendez of New Jersey,

1:00:46

Democratic of New Jersey was indicted

1:00:49

on stunning allegations

1:00:52

of corruption last week. I

1:00:54

mean, truly, the details here are cartoonishly

1:00:57

mind blowing, Like they found hundreds

1:00:59

of thousands of dollars in cash in this

1:01:01

guy's house, stuffed into what

1:01:03

it was like a jacket that literally had

1:01:05

his.

1:01:05

Name on it, gold

1:01:08

gold bars.

1:01:09

And the allegation here is that

1:01:12

this was that he got this cash and

1:01:14

the gold bars and like a luxury car for his

1:01:16

wife and house payments and all this other stuff

1:01:18

in exchange for doing favors for these Egyptian

1:01:20

businessmen and also doing favors, by the way, for the Egyptian

1:01:23

government. This is a man who

1:01:26

was, until this all came out, head

1:01:28

chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

1:01:30

So the fact that he's doing favors on

1:01:33

behalf of a foreign government. And by the way, this

1:01:35

is the second time he's been indicted over corruption

1:01:37

charges. Is just absolutely

1:01:39

stunning. Perhaps even more stunning,

1:01:42

though, has been his response. You

1:01:44

would think someone would have a little bit of shame about

1:01:46

this, but nope, not at all.

1:01:48

Put this up on the screen.

1:01:50

So he had the goal to

1:01:52

respond to calls for his resignation

1:01:54

with a new statement saying it's not lost

1:01:57

on me.

1:01:57

How quickly some are rushing to.

1:01:59

Judge Aino and

1:02:01

push him out of his seat. I am

1:02:03

not going anywhere. And

1:02:06

by the way, he's expected to give a

1:02:08

press conference this morning in which he announces

1:02:10

his re election days

1:02:13

after these indictment charges come down.

1:02:15

Will wait and see what he actually says.

1:02:17

But the goal to claim

1:02:19

some sort of identity based

1:02:21

persecution over

1:02:24

what are absolutely cartoonish

1:02:26

a caricature of corruption in terms

1:02:29

of the allegations is just absolutely

1:02:32

stunning. And by the way, it is quite the

1:02:34

opposite, because again, this

1:02:36

is the second time this man

1:02:39

has been indicted on corruption charge. Now the

1:02:41

other one's got thrown out, and so let's

1:02:43

say, in essentil proven guilty all of that.

1:02:45

But you would think that

1:02:47

perhaps after the first

1:02:50

corruption indictment charges, maybe

1:02:52

at the very least they wouldn't have made him

1:02:54

chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

1:02:56

Don't forget Crystal. It wasn't that they're thrown out. It said

1:02:58

it was a hung jury. It wasn't that, you know, it

1:03:00

was just a mistrial. So it was one of those where

1:03:03

at least some jury they thought he was guilty. He

1:03:05

was never declared in is I mean, look, you're guilty

1:03:07

before innocent, of course in the American

1:03:09

justice system. But I encourage everybody to go and read

1:03:12

that original indictment of mister Menendez

1:03:14

because it was shocking in twenty seventeen.

1:03:16

Now, the of course, cash isn't the only thing he's got in

1:03:19

that jacket pocket. He's got the race card that he's

1:03:21

got to go ahead, that's all right. And my

1:03:23

favorite thing is that after he got

1:03:25

the gold, allegedly he googled

1:03:27

how much is a kilo of gold

1:03:30

worth? On his phone. That's

1:03:32

the most boomer thing you can do. They

1:03:35

also found the DNA of the people

1:03:37

bribing him on that wad of cash.

1:03:39

Just by the way, I look, allegedly from the

1:03:41

DOJ all of that. So he gives you.

1:03:43

There's a perfectly innocent exploration for

1:03:45

the ones of for those who wanted dumbars.

1:03:48

Sixty six thousand dollars is a kilo of gold

1:03:50

and he had two of those. So that sounds nice. What a nice

1:03:52

life that two bricks of freaking

1:03:54

gold. It's like out of a Bond movie that

1:03:57

you were seeing this gentleman. But there have

1:03:59

been some people could have been coming out to yeah.

1:04:01

So actually the New Jersey delegation has turned

1:04:03

on him pretty hard, not across the

1:04:05

board, but put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal.

1:04:08

The most critically, the new Jersey Governor

1:04:10

Phil Murphy, who is also a Democrat, called

1:04:12

for Menandez's resignation. You

1:04:15

had a New Jersey representatives

1:04:17

Democratic New Jersey representatives including

1:04:19

Mikey, Cheryl Bill, Pascal Pascaral

1:04:21

Junior, and Josh S. Goottheimer Show favorite

1:04:24

calling for him to leave. So far, his

1:04:27

senate colleague there, Corey Booker, has been

1:04:29

silent, although last time around with the corruption

1:04:31

charges, Corey actually came out and affirmatively supported

1:04:34

him, So I guess his progress from some direction. You

1:04:37

have Representative Don Bayer of Virginia, who's

1:04:39

co founder of the Egypt human rights caucus

1:04:41

and critic of the current government's human rights record.

1:04:44

He said Menendez should step

1:04:46

down. You actually have another Democrat

1:04:49

representative, Andy Kim, who has jumped

1:04:51

into the Democratic primary to directly

1:04:54

challenge Menendez in a

1:04:56

primary fight for that Senate seat.

1:04:58

So Andy cam what he said

1:05:00

is that after Culture resign Center, Menandez

1:05:03

said, I'm not going anywhere. As a result, I feel

1:05:05

compelled to run against him. By the way I looked in Andy

1:05:07

Kim is sort of just like very standard

1:05:09

issue Democrat more or less.

1:05:11

He's voted with Joe.

1:05:11

Biden one hundred percent of the time. He hasn't distinguished

1:05:14

himself in all that many regards. But anyway, he's

1:05:16

just sort.

1:05:16

Of like not corrupt. So it seems like

1:05:18

or at least as we know it, as far as we do, as.

1:05:21

Far as we know.

1:05:21

This is New Jersey after all.

1:05:23

But yeah, as far as we know, he hasn't been indicted

1:05:25

over corruption charges, as Menandez

1:05:27

has put this. So we

1:05:29

also had to the point of the

1:05:32

identity based persecution here. We had very

1:05:34

prominent Latina Alexandria Cossio

1:05:36

Cortez coming out and also calling for him

1:05:38

to resign.

1:05:39

List, Take listen.

1:05:39

Centaer Bob Menandez of New Jersey, as

1:05:42

you know, has just been indicted

1:05:44

on bribery charges.

1:05:45

Should he resign?

1:05:46

And what do you think of his statement that

1:05:49

it has to do with him being a Latino.

1:05:52

Well, you know, I think it's the situation

1:05:54

is quite unfortunate, but

1:05:56

I do believe that it is in the best interests

1:05:59

for Senator Menendez to resign in

1:06:01

this moment. As you mentioned, consistency

1:06:04

matters. It shouldn't matter whether it's a Republican

1:06:06

or a Democrat. The details in

1:06:09

this indictment are extremely serious.

1:06:11

They involve the nature of

1:06:15

not just his but all of our seats

1:06:17

in Congress. And while

1:06:20

you know, as a Latina there are

1:06:22

absolutely ways in which there

1:06:25

is systemic bias, but I think what is

1:06:27

here in this indictment is quite clear, and

1:06:30

I believe this is in the best interest to

1:06:32

maintain the integrity of the seat.

1:06:34

Yeah.

1:06:35

I don't agree with our LATINX

1:06:37

colleague AOC all the time,

1:06:39

but you know, first of all, happy she said

1:06:41

Latina. At least LATINX appears to

1:06:43

have died so far in the lexicon, but she

1:06:45

called out him to resign, So you know, props to

1:06:47

her. And you know, it's not like it doesn't take

1:06:50

actual courage for Democratic lawmakers.

1:06:52

I mean, it's no joke. In the Senate,

1:06:55

he by all accounts, is going to

1:06:57

remain the Senate Foreign Relations chairman Schumer

1:06:59

has anything. You know, many of

1:07:01

these other senators don't want to cross him, because

1:07:04

if you have a single individual thing that you

1:07:06

want done, it's not going to happen. He can

1:07:08

straight up block it through committee.

1:07:10

So so far there has

1:07:12

been one senator

1:07:15

Democratic senator who has called for

1:07:17

him to resign. As John Fetterman put this up on the

1:07:19

screen, he says, Senator Menendez should resign. I mean,

1:07:21

this should be so easy, right, He's entitled

1:07:23

to the presumption of innocence, but he cannot continue

1:07:25

to wield influence over national policy, especially given

1:07:28

the serious and specific nature of the allegations. I

1:07:30

hope he chooses an honorable exit and focuses

1:07:32

on his trial. Thank you, Centaer Fetterman

1:07:34

for saying the most obvious, basic

1:07:37

thing that everyone should literally be saying, and

1:07:39

is actually worse than Schumer not saying anything. He

1:07:41

did put out a statement in which he praised

1:07:43

Menendez's service to New

1:07:45

Jersey and said he is entitled

1:07:48

to a fair trial and innocent until proven guilty.

1:07:50

Now he has stepped down from being chair

1:07:52

of the Foreign Relations Committee. But Schumer,

1:07:55

who is the most critical voice probably in all

1:07:57

of this, declining to call on him to

1:07:59

resign, along with again literally

1:08:02

every other senator Democratic

1:08:04

senator save for John Fetterman.

1:08:07

Here is Dick Durman, who is another powerful

1:08:09

United States Democratic Senator, declining

1:08:11

to call for him to step down the stake.

1:08:13

Lisson, let me tell you, Dana, this is a

1:08:15

very serious charge, There's no question

1:08:17

about it. But it bears reminding

1:08:20

us of what I've said about the

1:08:22

indictments against Donald Trump, equally

1:08:25

serious charges. These are,

1:08:27

in fact indictments that have to

1:08:29

be proven. Under the rule of law, the

1:08:32

person who is accused is entitled

1:08:34

to the presumption of innocence, and it's

1:08:36

the responsibility of the government to prove that case.

1:08:38

I said that about Donald Trump, will say the same thing

1:08:40

about Bob Menendez in terms

1:08:42

of resignation. That's a decision to be

1:08:44

made by Senator Menendez and the people of New Jersey.

1:08:47

So he's trying to sound very serious or whatever

1:08:49

they're but the bottom line is he won't call on him to resign.

1:08:51

So apparently he called for al Frankin to resign

1:08:54

the photo. That was enough for

1:08:56

Old Dick to come out and say that you got to go.

1:08:59

But a straight up federal incitement

1:09:01

over corruption is not enough.

1:09:03

I mean, which directly impacts his job.

1:09:06

I mean al Franken allegedly, you know, grabbing someone's

1:09:08

boobs, right that doesn't even have your job as

1:09:10

a senator right right, This is

1:09:12

you are literally trading your power

1:09:15

and influence to do favors for a foreign

1:09:17

government. And you people can't bring yourselves to say,

1:09:19

hey, maybe this guy is the right one for the job

1:09:21

right now while there's an ongoing Democratic

1:09:24

primary process. By the way, it's absolute

1:09:26

insanity. And Republicans are of

1:09:28

course getting excited because Menendez is up for reelection

1:09:31

in twenty twenty four, and they're thinking, hey, maybe we got

1:09:33

a shot at the seat if it's especially

1:09:35

if it's Menendez who ends up being the nominee. He's

1:09:37

probably the only Democrat in this era

1:09:40

who could lose the New Jersey Senate

1:09:42

seat. And yet you know, they're apparently willing

1:09:44

to take the risk on him.

1:09:45

Look, this time around, you got a Democratic governor already

1:09:47

came out and said he should resigned. So it's not even an incident.

1:09:49

But apparently, you know, as you were saying, he's got a press

1:09:51

conference. I think he's going to run for reelection. Everybody

1:09:54

thinks that. In the press conference from today, he says he's

1:09:56

gonna run.

1:09:56

That's the expectation.

1:09:57

And you know that's the expectation. And guess what he

1:09:59

won last time. He's still won despite the fact

1:10:01

that he was look in my opinion,

1:10:03

he was guilty as hell based on the indictment,

1:10:06

my own personal opinion of reading of the

1:10:08

twenty seventeen original indictment

1:10:10

against Menendez. But he beat it at trial in terms

1:10:12

of a mistrial. This time around, who

1:10:15

knows, you know, who knows? With a new Jersey

1:10:17

jury, he has nothing but confidence though

1:10:19

walking into this he's going to go and fight

1:10:21

it in court and he very well could win, just like he did

1:10:23

last time.

1:10:24

Well, and here's the thing too, and I'm doing this

1:10:26

in my monologue, like the Supreme Court

1:10:28

has so limited the definition of corruption, which

1:10:30

he used before with Bob

1:10:33

McDonald and to cover their own corrupt.

1:10:35

Behavior, et cetera.

1:10:36

So you know, he'll try to use every trick in the book,

1:10:38

But I mean, this seems like a pretty difficult one to wiggle

1:10:40

your way on when you got the literal gold bars in the

1:10:42

closet, I thought the.

1:10:43

Same thing about the last one about the private jet travel. Yeah,

1:10:46

basic quid pro quote, and he still got off.

1:10:48

So I don't know, amazing, Yeah, absolutely amazing.

1:10:50

All right, So this is kind of interesting.

1:10:52

So we've got, you know, in the new TV season or

1:10:54

whatever, I think, I guess it's about to drop. And

1:10:57

so catching Eyes is

1:10:59

a new red of The Bachelor,

1:11:01

but with the twists.

1:11:02

Put this up on the screen.

1:11:03

So it's called The Golden Bachelor

1:11:06

Looking for Love and f hickel Bob partner

1:11:08

and I actually, unironically, I actually

1:11:10

genuinely love this. So this man's name is Jerry

1:11:13

Turner. He is the Bachelor.

1:11:16

He's in his seventies. It's going

1:11:18

to be you know, a group of women who are between

1:11:20

sixty and seventy.

1:11:21

Five who were all vying for his.

1:11:23

Affection here in the traditional

1:11:25

bachelor style. They say in this New

1:11:28

York Times piece that they include

1:11:30

divorcees, widows, mothers, and grandmothers.

1:11:33

They were talking to the producers of this

1:11:35

show and they said that at first, when

1:11:37

they brought the contestants into like the Bachelor manch

1:11:39

or whatever. I've never watched The Bachelor, but this is my understanding

1:11:41

of how the villa works.

1:11:43

Generally familiar with the product.

1:11:45

But they brought them into the Bachelor

1:11:47

mansion and they were looking around at the bedrooms

1:11:49

and everything, and it was a sort of like typical Bachelor

1:11:51

reaction, yelling off the balconies

1:11:54

hanging, and they said, Okay, this feels like The Bachelor.

1:11:56

And then they came down to the kitchen and had mimosas

1:11:58

they were doing toasts, and we said, okay, this also feels

1:12:01

like the Bachelor. And then one woman

1:12:03

said, let's toast to Social Security,

1:12:06

Like, all right, that's not the Bachelor.

1:12:07

That's different.

1:12:08

But apparently this is no

1:12:10

accident in programming choices.

1:12:13

Put this up on the screen.

1:12:14

Also for The New York Times, TV

1:12:16

network's Last Best Hope, Boomers

1:12:19

viewers have fled primetime lineups for streaming

1:12:21

outlets, with one notable exception people over

1:12:23

sixty. So basically the

1:12:25

only people who are left watching

1:12:28

regular TV programs like The Bachelor

1:12:31

are all over sixty, and so you

1:12:33

know, reading the room,

1:12:36

Television networks are increasingly programming

1:12:39

for this older audience. Let

1:12:41

me and they point specifically to the Golden

1:12:43

Bachelor as like case in point of this.

1:12:46

But here's some of the numbers. This

1:12:48

was stunning to me.

1:12:49

Just nine years ago, the median

1:12:51

age of most top rated network entertainment

1:12:54

shows range from the mid forties to

1:12:56

the early fifties. Just nine years ago, not even

1:12:58

a decade ago. It was forty five for the sitcom How

1:13:00

I Met Your Mother, fifty two for Big Bang Theory.

1:13:03

Some shows like Brooklyn nine nine I had a median

1:13:05

viewer as young as thirty nine.

1:13:07

Now in the recent most recent

1:13:09

network television season, which ended in May,

1:13:12

median viewer was older than sixty

1:13:15

median including The Voice sixty

1:13:17

four point eight, the Mass Singer sixty,

1:13:19

Gray's Anatomy sixty four, Young Sheldon

1:13:21

sixty five plus the highest

1:13:23

range that Nielsen provides. And so it's

1:13:26

not just the Golden Bachelor. They're bringing back

1:13:28

Law and Order, starring the eighty two

1:13:30

year old Sam Waters.

1:13:32

I couldn't believe that when I saw that photo. I'm

1:13:34

like, Sam, retirement, man, I've

1:13:36

been on TV before I was born.

1:13:39

So they're bringing back Quantum

1:13:41

Leap, which actually as a kid, I used to love

1:13:43

watching Quantum Leap.

1:13:44

You should not be Magnum

1:13:46

Pi.

1:13:47

CBS is resurrecting Matt Locke

1:13:50

show. They say the Simpsons used to lampoon

1:13:52

for its older fan base. Last

1:13:54

year, NBC found a surprise hit in night

1:13:57

Court, another like nineteen eighties

1:13:59

era, eighties early nineties era

1:14:02

show that I also watched as a child, and

1:14:04

they talked about how they intentionally tried

1:14:06

to avoid computer screens

1:14:09

and other quote trappings of modern life.

1:14:11

We really intentionally want a night Court

1:14:14

to feel like a place a bit frozen

1:14:16

in time, was the idea, and apparently

1:14:18

it worked for their viewing audience because it was a

1:14:20

breakout success the revamped

1:14:23

night Court, which I never would have expected.

1:14:24

So it's kind of interesting.

1:14:25

Yeah, of course, it's fascinating. And the reason why it

1:14:27

matters above all is that this is what props up

1:14:29

linear television. I've talked a nauseum

1:14:31

about cable carriage fees and all that other

1:14:34

stuff, but the bedrock, the beating heart

1:14:36

of linear TV, of network TV for

1:14:38

years was the serialized show

1:14:41

The Modern Families. The you know, I'm

1:14:43

talking more of my era, Like you said, Law

1:14:45

and Order, What is an NCIA. I

1:14:47

think that's what it's called NCIS. Yeah, I think so NCIS,

1:14:50

which has various different ones,

1:14:52

Law and Order, you know, Law and Order, SPU, the

1:14:54

various spinoffs of all that.

1:14:56

They were the bedrock of television. It's what kept

1:14:59

America interested. It really peaked,

1:15:01

in my opinion, with Lost back in two

1:15:04

thousand and four. It was really like the

1:15:06

height of their powers when they were demanding

1:15:09

huge amounts of money. But people

1:15:11

don't forget this. Lost launched

1:15:13

and actually was helped by the Internet.

1:15:15

It was one of the first forum board TV

1:15:18

shows where people would talk on forums about

1:15:20

what was going on with Lost, and that

1:15:22

really presses the eventual move

1:15:25

to streaming television and really

1:15:27

a collapse of the funding model, because

1:15:29

the thing is that these shows and the whole

1:15:31

anchor you know that they present at these

1:15:33

big conferences, helped prop

1:15:35

up an entire advertising scheme

1:15:38

which came in the middle of commercial breaks. And

1:15:40

now almost a decade into the Netflix,

1:15:42

HBO, Peacock and all these other eras,

1:15:45

a lot of that has really gone. You know, even the ads

1:15:47

that we watched on those streaming services, if

1:15:49

you're ad supported, they're like fifteen second spots

1:15:51

for some idiot state farm ad. You know, it's not

1:15:54

the original ads that demand the

1:15:56

premiums that once were. It's

1:15:58

really interesting. You know, there was a do

1:16:00

you remember that you ever watched The West Wing is? Yeah,

1:16:02

so like The West Wing for example, one of the reasons

1:16:04

why it went on for seven seasons was

1:16:06

that it was one of the only shows that got rich people

1:16:09

to watch network TV. And so even though

1:16:11

the audience wasn't that big, it was like doctors

1:16:13

and lawyers and the intellectual class.

1:16:15

That's the whole business, CNBC

1:16:17

business.

1:16:18

And they were able to NBC at that point was

1:16:20

printing money off of The West

1:16:22

Wing Er for example, was another long

1:16:25

serialized one. And look, I enjoyed some

1:16:27

of these shows, you know at the time and all that, but I

1:16:29

think they died, you know, a good death for

1:16:31

reason. And I think it's very sad

1:16:34

actually, the fact that it is now effectively

1:16:36

an elderly market. We already saw

1:16:38

this fight that just happened with ESPN Disney

1:16:41

with the what was it, the I

1:16:43

forget who the cable carric Charter Communications.

1:16:46

That's right, this is the future. I mean, very soon

1:16:48

you're gonna move to an era where the cable bundle

1:16:51

is diminishing, like nobody's business. Once

1:16:53

sports goes fully online, it is

1:16:56

dead, absolutely dead, and

1:16:58

with that will come the collapse of NBC

1:17:01

Nightly News, ABC World

1:17:03

twenty twenty or whatever these programs

1:17:06

are, and the Today Show, a lot of these things. I

1:17:08

mean, these programs were hundreds

1:17:10

of million dollars. At one point, Matt

1:17:12

Lauer was single handedly responsible

1:17:14

for almost a billion in ad revenue for what was

1:17:16

going on over I mean, what are

1:17:19

they making today, maybe one hundred mil. And then you know, I'm

1:17:21

talking. You know, obviously that's a lot of money, but that's

1:17:23

like one tenth of what they used to make over

1:17:25

there, So you got to think about it that way.

1:17:26

Yeah, I mean the business piece is really

1:17:29

fascinating to me. And I mean the sad

1:17:31

reality that's increasingly coming into view

1:17:33

is, you know, the thought was alwould be better for consumers

1:17:36

once you weren't paying for the whole cable news bundle,

1:17:38

But increasingly people are paying more for

1:17:41

like eighteen different streaming services and

1:17:43

getting less. So it hasn't worked

1:17:45

out for consumers the way that one might hope that

1:17:47

it.

1:17:47

I think we'll get there. We're in a chaos era.

1:17:49

Maybe I don't know, we'll see, but you

1:17:52

know, in terms of the cultural

1:17:54

representation piece though, like with the Golden

1:17:56

Bachelor and whatever, I'm actually here for it.

1:17:58

It's funny. I was Kyle watching golf all

1:18:00

the time.

1:18:01

It's always onto the background and the

1:18:03

golf channel, and he watches TV like

1:18:05

he's an old band. It's like Golf channel and Weather

1:18:07

Channel. It's like eighty year

1:18:09

olds and Kyle are watching these channels. But anyway,

1:18:12

they played this senior

1:18:15

women's golf tour on

1:18:17

the channel, and actually really appreciate

1:18:19

it because so much of representation

1:18:22

of older women in particular, it's like

1:18:24

very limited.

1:18:25

In terms of television.

1:18:26

I feel like older men, you know, the Saltan Pepper

1:18:28

like demonair, older guy like that's been a thing for

1:18:30

a while. But to see these older

1:18:33

women, many of whom just look like a regular

1:18:35

old grandma out there doing these

1:18:37

incredible athletic feats and like, you

1:18:39

know, they were amazing on the golf course. It was kind of

1:18:41

cool. And so I'm for

1:18:43

the Golden Bachelor. I'm excited

1:18:46

to see what this is all about. Like these the

1:18:48

dude is less interesting to me than the fact

1:18:50

that they're actually going to have women who are

1:18:52

age appropriate to him right, who are vying

1:18:54

for his attention. So I'm kind of here for the

1:18:58

cool old grama representation

1:19:00

that this new era could represent.

1:19:01

I agree. I just think though it's an example

1:19:04

of the original age of the mass

1:19:06

market TV show, which could appeal to tens

1:19:08

of millions.

1:19:09

Absolutely that's gone.

1:19:10

I mean I lost, yeah, And.

1:19:11

That's the thing with you know, boomers,

1:19:14

this has been their whole life has been centered

1:19:16

around like when I get home and in the primetime

1:19:19

shows, like we sit down as a family, and like

1:19:21

the TV is central, and so they're just

1:19:23

that habit is not going to break because it's been a

1:19:25

lifelong habit whereas for

1:19:28

younger generations, you know, they've they've

1:19:31

evaluated the landscape and switched

1:19:33

over more readily and more easily. And

1:19:36

the other issue that's a problem for the

1:19:38

networks in terms of the business model is

1:19:40

it's still what they call the key demo, which

1:19:42

I think like twenty five fifty four

1:19:45

where advertisers that's what you sell

1:19:47

your ad revenue based on because that's

1:19:49

the group that is most lucrative that advertisers

1:19:52

really want to reach. So when all of

1:19:54

your audiences are like freaking say, sixty

1:19:56

five years old. I mean that's the other issue

1:19:59

for them in terms of the advertising model.

1:20:00

Some of the numbers you guys won't even believe, Like I just

1:20:03

looked it up. The season three premiere

1:20:05

of Loss got eighteen point eight million

1:20:08

US viewers. That is so that's

1:20:11

like one tenth of the adult population.

1:20:14

And I remember it as a communal experience

1:20:16

as I still love that show. But you

1:20:18

know that those days they are long

1:20:21

long gone. So you're going to see more of the golden

1:20:23

Batcheler's and hey, more power to them. But from

1:20:25

a funding and a business point of view, in a mass market,

1:20:27

mass cultures point of view, that thing is

1:20:30

that's a ship sale. That is a white flag surrender

1:20:32

for what they're doing. Indeed, Chris

1:20:36

al Woad, you take a look at.

1:20:37

In a single day, two instances

1:20:40

of absolutely cartoonish

1:20:42

corruption were revealed among some of America's

1:20:45

most powerful elites. Senator

1:20:47

Bob Menendez, chair of the powerful Foreign

1:20:49

Relations Committee, was indicted again

1:20:52

once again. The senator stands accused of accepting

1:20:54

cash, gold bars, house

1:20:57

payments, a luxury vehicle, and other gifts

1:20:59

in exchange for doing favors for Egyptian businessmen

1:21:02

and the Egyptian government. And

1:21:04

at the same time Pro Publica dropped their

1:21:06

latest investigation into the brazen

1:21:08

corruption of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,

1:21:11

who has arguably arguably become the

1:21:13

most ideologically influential justice

1:21:15

on this conservative court. In this latest

1:21:18

piece, they detail how Thomas was groomed by

1:21:20

conservative billionaires over years attending

1:21:22

ultra elite Bohemian grove retreats.

1:21:25

These ties not only result in all of those luxury

1:21:27

trips in private school tuition and payments for his

1:21:29

mother's home for millionaire Harlan Crow, but

1:21:32

also led to a relationship with the most

1:21:34

influential big money network in the

1:21:36

entire country, the Coke Network. Justice

1:21:38

Thomas went on to flagrantly disregard

1:21:41

any conflict of interest concerns by raising money

1:21:43

for the Cokes in spite of the fact that they routinely

1:21:46

have cases in front of the court. Of course,

1:21:48

none of this objectly corrupt behavior

1:21:50

was disclosed to the public, in what appears to be a clear

1:21:52

violation of federal ethics laws. Now,

1:21:55

these stories may seem kind of unrelated, different

1:21:57

parties details ideologies, but they

1:21:59

hold in common quite a lot. As it turns

1:22:01

out, from their grotesque betrayal

1:22:03

of public trust to the code of silence and complicity

1:22:06

among leads that enables such

1:22:08

absolutely outlandish behavior.

1:22:11

Both stories of corruption stand out for

1:22:13

their direct impact on policymaking

1:22:15

at the very highest levels. As chair

1:22:17

of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Menendez's

1:22:20

influence on our nation's foreign policy was second

1:22:22

only to the President himself, and

1:22:24

all the while he has apparently been available

1:22:27

for what, in the grand scheme of foreign governments, was

1:22:29

a cheap price. Egyptian businessmen were

1:22:31

allegedly able to buy this guy for a few hundred

1:22:33

thousand dollars of bargain. Considering

1:22:36

the power that he wields and the favors

1:22:38

he was able to allegedly provide,

1:22:40

the impact of Clarence Thomas's corrupt dealings

1:22:42

with the Cokes and other libertarian billionaires

1:22:45

is, if anything, even more far reaching. The

1:22:47

Cox looks set to win one of their longtime

1:22:50

goals in this upcoming Supreme Court

1:22:52

term, stripping federal agencies

1:22:54

of much of their power regulate anything from

1:22:56

clear air and water to labor rights

1:22:58

to consumer protections. This issue,

1:23:00

the so called Chevron deference,

1:23:03

is a libertarian billionaire obsession

1:23:05

and lo and behold. As Thomas has been fetted

1:23:08

and lavish with gifts by the very

1:23:10

businessman most influential in pushing

1:23:13

the end of Chevron, his position

1:23:15

on this issue has totally flipped. Thomas

1:23:18

once authored a major defense

1:23:20

of Chevron and the ability of federal agencies

1:23:22

to regulate in areas where congressional intent

1:23:24

is ambiguous, but his billionaire

1:23:26

buddies appear to have successfully changed

1:23:29

his mind.

1:23:29

Thomas has since.

1:23:30

Repudiated his previous position and

1:23:32

looks set to help end Chevron, granting

1:23:34

his billionaire benefactors their fondish

1:23:37

wish and recapping the ability

1:23:39

of the federal government to protect the rights of ordinary

1:23:41

Americans. But it's not

1:23:43

just their powerful impact on our democracy

1:23:46

that unites. These two instances of corruption

1:23:48

at the very highest level. Both

1:23:50

stem from the very same rotten

1:23:53

roots. In fact, no institution

1:23:56

has done more to legalize and

1:23:58

normalize corruption than the

1:24:00

Supreme Court. David Sorrotov Lever News

1:24:02

has been making this point very powerfully. He writes,

1:24:05

if proven true, the sordid details

1:24:07

of the indictment of center of Menendez reflect a country

1:24:09

whose billionaire owned Supreme Court has been

1:24:12

explicitly telling politicians that

1:24:14

flagrant grotesque corruption will

1:24:16

now be considered perfectly legal. In twenty

1:24:18

sixteen, justices unanimously

1:24:21

overturn the corruption conviction of former Virginia

1:24:23

Governor MacDonell, essentially saying

1:24:25

gifts may be exchanged for certain

1:24:28

government favors. Menendez weaponize

1:24:30

that to fight a past indictment, and will likely

1:24:32

try to do so again. Scotis

1:24:35

justices now have a personal motive to

1:24:37

try to protect Menendez from prosecutors.

1:24:39

Justice's own acceptance of gifts

1:24:42

from those with businesses before the court mimics

1:24:44

the alleged scheme detailed in the Menande's

1:24:46

indictment. Supreme Court justices will

1:24:48

likely be personally averse to

1:24:51

criminalizing the same behavior

1:24:53

we now know that they themselves routinely

1:24:56

engage in. Now this is just

1:24:58

the most explicit, codified

1:25:00

way in which elites enable corruption. Just

1:25:03

behold the silence, though from most

1:25:05

corners surrounding these new stunning developments.

1:25:08

In response to Menendez once again

1:25:10

facing indictment for insane levels

1:25:12

of corruption. As of this writing, one

1:25:16

of his Senate Democratic colleagues has called for

1:25:18

his resignation. Just one

1:25:20

kudos to John Fetterman for doing that and

1:25:23

this code of silence and protection comes all the

1:25:25

way from the top.

1:25:26

Majority leader. Schumer not only.

1:25:28

Declined to call for Menendez to step down, but

1:25:30

took this opportunity to praise him

1:25:33

as a dedicated public servant

1:25:35

who is quote always fighting hard

1:25:37

for the people of New Jersey. Of course,

1:25:39

according to the indictment, he was in reality

1:25:41

fighting hard for some shady Egyptian

1:25:44

businessmen, not so much for the

1:25:46

people of New Jersey. Meanwhile,

1:25:48

Chief Justice John Roberts, who supposedly

1:25:50

cares so deeply about the institution of

1:25:52

the Court, has done nothing but stonewall

1:25:55

any attempts at real reform.

1:25:57

Remember, the Supreme Court, alone among

1:25:59

federal courts, has no code of ethics,

1:26:01

allowing justices to engage in whatever

1:26:04

twisted, brazen levels of corruption that

1:26:06

they could justify to themselves, because they don't

1:26:08

have to justify it to us. None of

1:26:10

Thomas's fellow justices have spoken a

1:26:12

single critical word against his enrichment

1:26:14

by a powerful network of billionaires and conservative

1:26:17

activists. And the reason why is pretty

1:26:19

simple. Because so many elite

1:26:22

politicians are guilty of some level

1:26:24

of corruption, even if not as cartoonish as

1:26:26

Menandez or Thomas. There is a sort of principle

1:26:28

of mutually assured destruction that

1:26:30

ends.

1:26:31

Up reigning supreme.

1:26:32

They all keep their mouths shut and the status

1:26:34

quo locked in because their own hands

1:26:37

are not clean. That's

1:26:39

why stock trading remains. That's why anti

1:26:41

corruption laws are loosen, and even when politicians

1:26:43

and their aids are indicted, they frequently get

1:26:45

let off. These men believe

1:26:48

the rules do not apply to them, and unfortunately,

1:26:51

too often they are correct.

1:26:53

And that is what enables it.

1:26:55

Because you have and if you want to hear my reaction to

1:26:57

Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber

1:26:59

today at Breakingpoints dot com.

1:27:04

All right, sorry, were looking at.

1:27:05

Of all the causes that I've been early to, perhaps

1:27:07

the call I'm most proud of to be attached

1:27:09

to is calling critical race theory and many

1:27:12

of the huckster's complete grifters from

1:27:14

the beginning. Nobody much cared in twenty

1:27:16

eighteen. In twenty nineteen about critical race theory

1:27:18

or emerging con artists like Nicole Hannah Jones

1:27:21

and Ibram Kendy, but I had my eye on

1:27:23

them. Those who want to see can go back and watch

1:27:25

rising coverage from at that time of me calling them out

1:27:27

if you're interested. I saw them clearly for what

1:27:29

they were, nothing more than modern day race hosters,

1:27:31

capitalizing on the guilds of white liberals

1:27:34

to both enrich themselves, advance their careers,

1:27:36

and destroy any social fabric left

1:27:38

in this country that is not obsessed

1:27:40

with race. Jones, Kendy, Robin

1:27:43

DiAngelo. They had one single mission,

1:27:45

convinced the elites in this country there is one

1:27:48

source for all of our problems and nothing

1:27:50

else race. This is reductive

1:27:52

and a false view of history, but it was successful.

1:27:55

Ultraliberals on campuses were beginning

1:27:57

to be indoctrinated, slowly but surely.

1:27:59

In Infrastructure was built up all throughout

1:28:01

twenty eighteen and nineteen for the perfect

1:28:03

moment, and luckily for them, it came with

1:28:05

the BLM riots of twenty twenty. White

1:28:08

liberals and corporations suddenly began playing

1:28:10

Olympics to see who could outwoke or out

1:28:12

virtue signal each other, and these people were

1:28:14

happy to take their money. Kendy,

1:28:16

especially Kendy, is unsurprisingly

1:28:18

the dumbest and yet the most successful

1:28:20

amongst them. He has written several books

1:28:23

about quote anti racism. He

1:28:25

advocates for such ideas as a constitutional

1:28:27

anti racist amendment, literal race

1:28:29

discrimination in favor of blacks, and

1:28:31

brainwashing children from a young age

1:28:33

about his view of race. Every

1:28:35

genderquer bookstore in this country has his book

1:28:38

bury at the front row, and billionaires

1:28:40

have flooded this man with money to continue

1:28:42

his important work. He decided

1:28:44

to use that money in conjunction with Boston University

1:28:47

to create a new center and henceforwarth In

1:28:49

twenty twenty, the Center for Anti Racist

1:28:51

Research was born. It sounds as smart

1:28:53

as the Zoolander one, now endowed

1:28:55

with tens of millions of dollars and a new mandate

1:28:58

to research and promote the anti racist cump. Three

1:29:00

years later, though, it turns out the entire

1:29:03

thing was as much of a grift as

1:29:05

a con as I thought from the very beginning.

1:29:07

More than half of the employees of the center were abruptly

1:29:09

fired just recently after Kenny has apparently

1:29:12

burned through much of forty three million

1:29:14

dollars. In that time period. They have produced

1:29:17

no real research, applied for and

1:29:19

given grants with no work output,

1:29:21

no real original work to speak of. In

1:29:23

fact, one professor at the university said

1:29:26

Kenny quote had a pattern of amassing

1:29:28

grants without any commitment to producing

1:29:31

the research obligated, adding that, to

1:29:33

the best of my knowledge, there is no good faith

1:29:35

commitment to fulfilling funded research

1:29:37

projects. She wrote that in twenty twenty

1:29:39

one, instead of thanking her, the university

1:29:41

retaliated against her, refusing to even

1:29:43

renew her affiliation. The grift is

1:29:45

now so obvious Boston University has

1:29:48

had to launch an official inquiry into Kendy's

1:29:50

leadership. They note that originally the center

1:29:52

was supposed to track racial disparities nationwide,

1:29:55

have a graduate degree program, a media

1:29:58

enterprise, and research teams on semic

1:30:00

racism. Only one of those

1:30:02

projects ever came to fruition, a half

1:30:04

assed media project, the so called Racial

1:30:06

Data Tracker, did not, which was supposed

1:30:08

to be the centerpiece for all their work

1:30:11

and their funding. As for the graduate degree

1:30:13

programs, nope, nowhere to be seen.

1:30:15

In fact, it turns out that Kendy for the last

1:30:18

several months, has been on leave

1:30:20

from his own center that he was supposed

1:30:22

to be running, why to work on things

1:30:24

like his podcast, his new ESPN

1:30:27

Plus series about racism and sports

1:30:29

called Skin in the Game, And while he's

1:30:32

rolling in corporate cash and enriching

1:30:34

himself. The people who worked there saw

1:30:36

him quote as a tool of capitalism,

1:30:39

and would often exploit them and their label

1:30:41

labor. One professor called it a

1:30:43

colossal waste of millions of dollars and

1:30:46

noted that Kenny's work was thought to even be influenced

1:30:48

by many of the billionaire donors who had backed him

1:30:50

and the university, including rolling

1:30:53

out the red carpet for big pharma executives.

1:30:55

It would all be funny if millions of people

1:30:57

had not bought this idiot's book and shoved it down

1:31:00

their children's throat. The media had not celebrated

1:31:02

him with some modern, modern day Frederick

1:31:04

Douglass for a while in this country, as I said,

1:31:07

you couldn't even go into a bookstore or Barnes and Noble

1:31:09

without seeing how to be an anti racist or

1:31:11

anti racist baby prominently displayed.

1:31:14

You couldn't turn on the TV or watch a movie

1:31:16

without having this racialism at the center. And

1:31:18

how many of us couldn't even open social media without

1:31:20

seeing his signature quote. It's not enough

1:31:22

to not be racist, you must be actively

1:31:24

anti racist. It was everywhere. The

1:31:27

collapse of the Kendy Center, the wasting of

1:31:29

millions of dollars it's the latest casualty

1:31:31

of the BLM movement. Who can forget the BLM

1:31:33

executive coccused of stealing ten million dollars

1:31:35

of donor funds who use them as a quote personal

1:31:38

piggybank, or the multi million dollar mansions

1:31:40

that were purchased by these groups leaders. I am

1:31:42

hard pressed really to think of a single

1:31:44

major figure in the so called movement who

1:31:46

got prominent after Ferguson, who hasn't

1:31:49

turned out to be a grifter rather than one who is

1:31:51

honest. And I'm going to end with this. The billionaires

1:31:53

and the frankly rich white liberals, they owe only

1:31:55

themselves to blame. These people were never

1:31:57

hidden who they are. Nicole Hannah Jones famously

1:32:00

appeared in a so called racial justice movement sponsored

1:32:02

by Shell Corporation. Anti racism

1:32:04

has always been a tool of the billionaire

1:32:07

class to distract and to divide the populace.

1:32:09

It is not an accident that it was the prevailing thought

1:32:11

after BLM, and is certainly not an

1:32:14

accent that despite all these revelations, all

1:32:16

of us know this. Kendy's going to get away with

1:32:18

it. ESPN the podcast.

1:32:20

He'll still be called for commentary during the next

1:32:22

racial incendiary moment. The grift

1:32:25

is the point. The only thing we can do is

1:32:27

not buy into it next time. I mean,

1:32:29

Crystal, it's been it's I mean, I know you're no fan

1:32:32

of Ibram Kennedy, but he was the

1:32:34

perfect person. You know. I have a funny story.

1:32:36

I was in a book club and in twenty

1:32:38

eighteen I think that was Stamped by Racism. That

1:32:40

was a stamp by race or whatever it was called. It was the first

1:32:43

time I remember this is the It was a trash

1:32:45

book. But one of the guys in charge was

1:32:47

I'm not going to give away the name. He was like a dean of a liberal

1:32:49

arts college, and he's like, I think this really speaks

1:32:51

to to me. And I brought up some of the class concerns,

1:32:54

even at that time, before I even started

1:32:56

the show with you, and it was like I was speaking gibberish

1:32:58

to this ma. He said, no, no addresses that in the book.

1:33:00

All class concerns are downstream

1:33:03

of race. And I was like, well, okay, hold

1:33:05

on a second here. Now, we would be fools

1:33:07

to say that it's not deeply intertwined.

1:33:10

But the causality and then the things

1:33:12

that they reach for as their solutions are

1:33:14

obviously very much at odds for a lot of what

1:33:16

we believe in here at this show.

1:33:17

I mean this times in perfectly with Freddie

1:33:20

Debor's latest books that we interviewed him

1:33:22

about how elites hijack the social justice

1:33:24

movement as I think what it's called. And

1:33:27

look, capitalism has created a

1:33:29

class race stratified society

1:33:32

very intentionally, and there is no

1:33:34

doubt that black people, starting with slavery

1:33:37

and throughout our history have been completely

1:33:39

screwed by our system. And

1:33:41